After spending three games on the bench and being pushed down to the lower order in his first outing, Rahul Tripathi anchored Kolkata Knight Riders to a match-winning total against Chennai Super Kings in IPL 2020. It was the knock of one who’d returned to where he belonged.

“Dream come true,” gushed a beaming Rahul Tripathi after the game, gushing and gawping all at the same time as Shah Rukh Khan, the KKR co-owner and Bollywood superstar sent flying kisses in his direction. In a batting line-up filled with T20 bigwigs, and playing just his second match in IPL 2020, the 29-year-old Tripathi deservedly took all the plaudits for his 51-ball 81.

In the previous game, Tripathi had walked in at No.8, instantly making an impact with a 16-ball 36 to temporarily assuage a run-rate that was going rising. KKR lost that game, but Tripathi, in his first match of the season, gave a ready endorsement of his abilities, convincing KKR to swap him in for Sunil Narine, who was struggling as an opener.

Tripathi has all the attributes of a quintessential T20 opener – he’s a brisk scorer, good at finding gaps; he likes to go over the in-field, and he just doesn’t let the run-rate dip. Against CSK, he scored almost half the team total, hitting eight fours and three sixes when his teammates couldn’t manage more than one of each. Even when his opening partner Shubman Gill succumbed early, Tripathi continued at a fair tick, racing to 31 off 18 to boost KKR’s Powerplay score to 52, and was only dismissed in the 17th over. In the first ten overs of KKR’s innings, he had faced more deliveries than Narine had in the first four matches combined.

He’s done it before

Tripathi, a short-built, aggressive batsman, was a surprise performer for Rising Pune Supergiant in his debut IPL campaign in 2017. Sought out after the trials by coach Stephen Fleming, who was coaching the now-defunct franchise, Tripathi ended up garnering 391 runs in a breakthrough season, scoring at a rate of 146.44.

What was eye-catching, though, was that he slammed 43 fours and 17 sixes en route – 274, or 70 per cent, of his season’s runs coming in boundaries. And it wasn’t just short cameos at the top – Tripathi showed that he had it in him to bat deep without taking his foot off the pedal. Against a strong KKR line-up that year, he whacked a 52-ball 93, nine fours and seven sixes included. Ben Stokes’s 14, was the second-highest score of the innings.

“I go with my gut feeling,” Tripathi later said. It was a simple formula; maximise the Powerplay overs, pick your gaps, and give the team early impetus, anchoring the innings for as long as he can.

Rahul Tripathi 81 (51) – innings scoring rate progression:

Balls faced: 0-9: 14 runs
10-19: 24 runs
20-29: 10 runs
30-39: 11 runs
40-51: 22 runs#IPL2020 #CSKvsRR

— The CricViz Analyst (@cricvizanalyst) October 7, 2020

Why was Tripathi pushed down the order?

As soon as the 2017 season ended, and RPS was dissolved, Tripathi’s spot at the top wasn’t guaranteed anymore. At Rajasthan Royals, his new home the next year,  Tripathi was shunted down the order, while D’Arcy Short, Jos Buttler and even Heinrich Klaasen partnered Ajinkya Rahane at the top.

Soon, Buttler became immovable – 548 runs at an average of 54.80 with five fifties made him the engine of the RR line-up that year. Out of 12 games, Tripathi spent eight in the middle order, but it was clear that couldn’t maximise his potential with fewer deliveries to play with. In the first half of the season, he was promoted up the order twice, falling to single-digit scores, but in his third outing, he slammed a fine 58-ball 80, where he scored 49 per cent of the team’s runs. It was evident that he belonged at the top.

Question that begs to be asked—who brought him down the order? And why? https://t.co/d6nZ3rfzun

— Aakash Chopra (@cricketaakash) October 7, 2020

However, given Buttler’s sustained success and Rahane’s consistency, Tripathi stayed put in the middle order for the 2019 season as well. In the final innings of 2019, when he got the opening slot, albeit belatedly, he stroked 50 off 45 when none of the top six managed more than 27.

Back at the top

He was one of the 11 players released by RR before the IPL 2020 auction, and thankfully for Tripathi, he was bought by a team that was willing to move their batting order around. “Our batting is very fluid,” captain Dinesh Karthik said after the CSK win. “That is the good thing. Over the years fluid line-ups have done better.”

With a healthy tussle to find spots, Tripathi was determined to squeeze in a place, as explained by bowling coach Kyle Mills after the game. “Not just in the academy before,” Mills said, “but the four weeks leading up to the camps here, he was exceptional – he has literally worked the house down and he’s been an example. Even as a young fella, he was fighting for his spot in the team. He’s an example to everyone really, and he’s reaping the rewards, especially from the last game – to come out today and get 80-odd, and lead by example for his opportunity at the top … [it] has been magic to see.”

When asked about his topsy-turvy ride in the IPL so far, the soft-spoken Tripathi was rather philosophical. “I think it’s a journey and I have loved this journey,” he said. In the age of the flashy stroke-maker, Tripathi, with the old-fashioned grind, is a much-needed reminder of the effectiveness of the utility player.