Shardul Thakur has a tendency to surprise you. With his batting, his bowling, and sometimes even with his words. Ask Ian Bishop, who asked Thakur on live broadcast before a 2023 World Cup game how he bowled the wobble-seam delivery. Thakur answer was, "I don't know. I just hold it like this [seam-up] and bowl. [I] don't do much, whatever happens happens."
In the last week or so, his all-round performances have surprised everyone yet again. Despite all the limelight on bigger stars returning to domestic cricket, Thakur has overshadowed them with both bat and ball.
The most recent of those came on a hazy Thursday morning in Mumbai. In a must-win game against Meghalaya to make the knockouts of the Ranji Trophy, the pre-match talk was centred around Rohit Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shreyas Iyer skipping this round for Mumbai. The attention had shifted to Delhi, where a last-minute plan was hatched to broadcast Virat Kohli's comeback to domestic cricket.
Around 9am, it emerged Delhi would bowl first and the thousands who had turned up at the Arun Jaitley Stadium would have to wait to watch their hero bat. Meanwhile, in one suburb of Mumbai, the home team made six changes to their XI and Thakur took the new ball with no cameras and fans in the vicinity.
That he struck in the first over was not really a surprise. The real deal came in his second over, when bowling from over the wicket, he swung the ball into left-hand batter B Anirudh to hit off stump. Next ball he pitched fuller and drew an edge from right-hand batter Sumit Kumar and Shams Mulani pouched the catch at third slip.
On one hand, there was a deafening cacophony in Delhi after seeing Kohli just on the field. On the other, Thakur ran in to bowl the hat-trick ball amid the honking of peak-hour traffic around the Sharad Pawar Academy in the concrete jungle of the Bandra-Kurla Complex.
Next in was Meghalaya's No. 4 Jaskirat Sachdeva, another left-hand batter, and Thakur sent down another inswinger to beat the inside edge and hit the stumps. His hat-trick had reduced the visitors to 2 for 6 and Meghalaya were now in danger of breaking Hyderabad's unwanted record of the lowest team score (21) in the Ranji Trophy.
But Thakur's feat came at a time that robbed him of the immediate recognition it deserved. Not only was this game not being shown live but also Thakur had hardly finished his spell when there was a commotion beyond the cover boundary. Thakur's head turned as well to see what the fuss was about. Fans were hanging over the fence and reaching out with their phone cameras. A few of them were screaming. A group of people emerged in the nets with a kit bag, a big umbrella, and a few chairs, and it turned out Rohit had arrived to train ahead of the ODI series against England.
It was not for the first time this month that Thakur had done the hard work while the spotlight was elsewhere. It had started against Jammu and Kashmir in the previous round when Rohit and Jaiswal had returned to the domestic circuit. Mumbai had collapsed to 47 for 7 in the first innings and 101 for 7 in the second, before Thakur rescued the team with a half-century and a century, respectively.
Stationed at long-off towards the end of his spell of 7-2-19-4, Thakur whistled a couple of times to catch Rohit's attention. When Rohit finally responded, Thakur pointed to the scorching sun to imply that it was too hot by then, and Rohit should have come earlier. It's not that Rohit didn't know this, but Thakur thought he would tell his friend the information he has gathered from all the training sessions and matches he has been playing in Mumbai this domestic season, toiling away and not held back by the lack of an IPL contract and no India comeback on the horizon.
Thakur does not know what is next for him after the Ranji Trophy, but that may not stop him from surprising you.