Rinku Singh has started his international career well, but India need to back him through rough patches, for he is not an average Twenty20 cricketer, writes Abhishek Mukherjee.

Rinku Singh has batted only four times in his seven T20I matches. He has scored 128 runs from 59 balls, and has got out only once, which makes the average easy to calculate. No one has faced as many balls in men’s T20Is and has a rate quicker than his 217.

A small sample, you may say. Fair enough. No cricketer should be judged based on 59 balls of batting, even if they have been against three oppositions in three countries.

That is also the reason I shall not cite Rinku’s onslaught that helped the Kolkata Knight Riders pull off a heist of a lifetime against the Gujarat Titans earlier this year.

Let us focus on more data. Rinku has struck at 163 across 526 balls in all Twenty20 matches in 2023. Put a 500-ball cut-off, and he ranks fifth in the world, after Heinrich Klaasen, Tim David, Suryakumar Yadav, and Will Jacks. You can see the league of batters he belongs to.

Restrict it to batters at Nos.5 and 6 – Rinku’s positions – and his strike rate of 162 is next to only David’s 171 among those who have faced 300 balls this year.

Rinku’s death over-strike rate of 215 is also the best of all batters who have faced 150 balls in 2023. In the 19th and 20th overs, the numbers read 269 and 272. These absurd strike rates are the proverbial mile ahead of anyone else.

But then, you may overlook this as well. Form, not career, you may say. Again, a valid argument, for we are talking one year here, even if it has been an exceptional year.

What happens if we start from January 1, 2022 and assess cricketers over a two-year period? Only David has faced more balls at five or six while scoring at a rate quicker than Rinku’s 152.

Remove the filter on batting positions, and he drops to ninth place in the world. Remove the date criterion, and he is 11th-best of all five-or-six batters in Twenty20 history. Of the ten men above him on this list, no one comes close to his batting average of 37.30.

It is important to understand why Rinku averages this high: while batting at five or six, he has struck at 146 over a nine-year career while remaining unbeaten on more than a third of his innings. He lasts 26 balls per dismissal – that number goes up to 41 balls in 2023 – despite the high-risk approach.

Combine all the above information, and you will realise why he is an elite ‘finisher’. This is someone who has thrived at five and six, at the death, for he comes out and hits but he does not get out. He is also in the form of his life.

What can possibly go wrong for him?

A word of caution

A little over a year ago, India had summoned Dinesh Karthik from the commentary box as part of the build-up for the T20 World Cup.

You can see why. He had made 242 runs in the death overs in IPL 2022 at a strike rate of 220 – the best among his compatriots by a distance – and India did not have anyone who could get going at that position.

In the build-up to the World Cup, Karthik played 24 times for India and struck at 151. There was a fifty and two forties in these along with a few cameos.

But at the World Cup, he made 1, 6, and 7 in his three outings. In the first, he was stumped in unusual manner off the penultimate ball. In the second, on a seaming Perth wicket, only one Indian went past 15. And in the third, he was run out after Virat Kohli sent him back.

Karthik has never played for India since the World Cup and is unlikely to again, for he failed thrice in three outings. A similar fate may await Rinku if he runs into a string of single-digit scores.

Most young cricketers are coached to get their eye in before taking risks. ‘Finishers’ – in T20, that term is usually reserved for batters who come to bat in the death overs – are expected to abandon conventional coaching and take risks very early in their innings.

As a result, they are likelier to fail than the batters who bat higher up the order. To them, two consecutive failures can simply mean a couple of high-risk shots – the defining component of their day job – going wrong.

Karthik was discarded after a brief streak of failures. It is important that the management has more faith in Rinku. You do not come across cricketers like Rinku every day.

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