RCB batter Rajat Patidar entered the history books on Wednesday courtesy of his century against LSG in the eliminator. Patidar has now become the first uncapped player to hit a century in the IPL playoffs.
While the young cricketer has the whole cricketing world’s eye set on him now, this was not the case at the beginning of this season, given he had gone unsold during this year’s IPL auctions.
Yup, Patidar had gone unsold during the mega auctions, even RCB had not bid on him, despite his base price of Rs 20 lakhs. Mind you, this is not Patidar’s first IPL season. He had previously represented RCB in 4 games, scoring 71 runs at a strike rate of 114.
But an injury to Luvnith Sisodia meant that RCB eventually got him for his base price and since then, Patidar has represented the franchise in 6 IPL games this season, scoring 275 runs in 6 innings at an impressive strike rate of 156.
However, according to reports, RCB had him in their backup squad where the young batter was groomed and had the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of greats of the game like Virat Kohli and Faf Du Plessis.
When Patidar came into bat at no 3 against LSG in the eliminator on Wednesday, his team was in deep trouble, with Du Plesis back in the pavilion for a duck and Kohli simply ticking along at run a ball.
Given LSG’s impressive batting lineup and in form batsmen like Quentin De Kock and KL Rahul, it didn’t look like RCB was going to be able to put up a fighting total and history would repeat itself for the team, who have always come very close to but have never managed to cross the final hurdle to get the coveted trophy.
But Patidar had different ideas. He kept attacking from one end, reaching his 50 in just 28 balls. He would accelerate further to reach his century with a brilliant pull-six off Moshin Khan on his 49 delivery.
Even as wickets fell, Patidar continued his onslaught and was aided by an in-form Dinesh Karthick (37 off 23) as the duo added 84 runs in the last 5 overs to get RCB to 207 at the end of 20 overs. Patidar finished the innings ith 112 not out of 54 balls with 12 fours and 7 beautiful sixes.