Mohsin Khan, out. Mayank Yadav and Akash Deep, unavailable, at least for now. Avesh Khan, just about back from injury. The Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) fast-bowling attack in IPL 2025 was looking rather ragged till Shardul Thakur and Prince Yadav solved their problems on Thursday - at least for one night - against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), the batting unit that has led all the talk since last season.
"Can LSG stop Travishek?" Yes, said Thakur, with a short ball to Abhishek Sharma. The secret, as our experts explained afterwards, was in the build-up to the wicket delivery. And what about Travis Head? Prince stepped up, pitched it up, went under the bat swing, and knocked out off and middle. Not to forget Thakur's first-baller to Ishan Kishan, SRH's centurion from their run-fest against Rajasthan Royals (RR) last weekend.
"One is, he is looking to swing the ball. With the new ball, he is getting that shape into the left-handers and he's trying to mix it up with the yorkers," Cheteshwar Pujara said of Thakur's bowling plan on ESPNcricinfo's TimeOut show. "If you look at the previous deliveries, which Abhishek or Travis Head faced, he tried bowling yorkers - it was low full-tosses - but as a batter you are thinking, is it going to be a yorker or a back-of-a-length ball. And suddenly, he bowls a bumper, which could surprise a batter. And then you have less fraction of a second to execute you shot, and that's why I think Abhishek was late on his shot."
It did look like that. Most days, against most bowlers, Abhishek hits those many tiers up in the stands. This time, it went to Nicholas Pooran at deep square-leg.
"I call it bowling craft. When we were batters, we faced a lot of bowlers. The best bowlers we faced were often those that got their bowling craft. And bowling craft is when you're not expecting that particular ball," Nick Knight elaborated. "If Abhishek was waiting for that ball, [if] he knew it was going to be short, it was out of the park. But because he isn't quite sure if it's going to be full or is it going to swing, then you're a bit late on it and that's the difference between it going out of the park and getting caught. The bowling craft was spot on."
And, in seven-and-a-half overs, SRH were 76 for 3 - still a lot of runs - but without their big three of Head, Abhishek and Kishan. Head was in the bag of Prince, who made his IPL debut this season, and occasionally clocked 140kph. More than anything else, Prince backed his strengths.
"He had a clear game plan. He wanted to bowl yorkers and he wanted to mix it up with slower bouncers and bouncers," Pujara said. "There was a clear game plan: he was not going to bowl a length ball or a back-of-a-length ball. When you have that clarity, then comes the execution.
"I think his execution was spot on. There were times when he ended up bowling half-volleys, but still I think those are good deliveries on that pitch. And he showed a lot of courage. You need courage to bowl those balls."
After Head was felled, SRH added just 114 runs in 12.3 overs. The sixes didn't stop. Aniket Verma hit five, Pat Cummins hit three in a four-ball innings. But the lost momentum never came back.
'His execution was spot on,' says Pujara
"The bowled well in the middle, credit needs to go to them as well. They picked up early wickets, that stopped a little bit of the momentum," Heinrich Klaasen said in the press conference later. "We just didn't score enough runs. One or two wickets [fell] early in the innings and it was difficult to keep on going with the momentum. It wasn't enough.
"If you look at our batting line-up, we're destructive till batter No. 8 [Cummins]. So you don't need Travis and Abhishek to come off every time. We're good enough to score runs without them as well. They put teams under a lot of pressure when they do come off, makes our job a little bit easier. But you will never have a season where both of them score a thousand runs. It is the way we play - it's on the riskier side, but no, we are big enough players to know we need to do it on our own too."
Travishek, plus Kishan, were stopped. SRH only managed 190 for 9, well under the 300 observers have been waiting for them to get. LSG, as written-off as a team could be after one game, had their first win and their first points, with something of a ragtag fast-bowling attack that, for now, has found a couple of unlikely heroes to front it.