RP Singh - Fit, fine and firing

RP Singh - Fit, fine and firing

Now I'm used to this at the end of the day's play. It's part of the recovery, there's no swelling," RP Singh said about the ice-pack on his knees. The left-arm pacer from Rae Bareli is a far-cry from the bowler who broke through in the mid-2000s as the next big find. He clocked in around 140s and generated disconcerting bounce to trouble batsmen. Today, a bouncing belly and a visibly shortened run-up is hard to miss as he runs in to bowl.

He makes no bones about it as he speaks about his off-season routine. "I went home, went to the gym a bit, roamed around with friends, party-sharty maanayi - yehi kiya. Thodi bahut bowling ki. (Partied with friends and bowled a bit). But I focussed more on training. That is the only way to maintain fitness. I should run more, but I'm not a big fan of running. But I go the gym regularly"

He hasn't played for India since the forgettable England tour of 2011. He's also managed to find a place in the starting XI of an IPL team only four times in the last three seasons. In domestic cricket, with Uttar Pradesh managing to find extremely talented youngsters, RP Singh had to find other avenues to prolong his cricket career. He found Gujarat, but even there, he has managed to feature in only three of the eight group games this season and had to sit out of the quarterfinals.

However, on Monday (January 2), playing in the semifinals against Jharkhand, he made an impact with both bat and ball to put his team ahead in the crucial encounter. After scoring a quickfire 40 to take them to 390, he took three crucial wickets to reduce Jharkhand to 214 for 5 at Stumps on Day 2.

After accounting for the wickets of openers Sumit Kumar and Pratyush Singh, he dismissed the in-form Ishan Kishan late in the day. Kishan, had blazed his way to a 61 off 58 balls, stroking nine boundaries and three sixes before getting dismissed. Speaking about the crucial breakthrough, he said, "Maybe that's his playing style. In four or five-day cricket, very few people play the way he does, but that's his way. At the end, we set him up. I bowled a cutter at the right spot and got the wicket. Sometimes the cutter gets extra bounce also and the batsman gets caught midway."

Speaking off his own bowling, he added, "My bowling is simple, I'm doing what I've always done - keep it short of good length and on a good length. I bowl off a short run up more now. I focus on keeping the palm behind the ball to maintain its backspin. If the backspin is maintained it will swing more and bounce more also.

"We have good balance in our team and good bowlers. Jasprit Bumrah and Rush Kalaria bowl with great accuracy. And they have played eight matches, which is very challenging because we have very few days' between matches in our domestic circuit.

"The pitch has become a bit slower. Maybe we could have bowled in better areas. But of course if you compare it to previous days, as pace bowlers, we'll always feel it has slowed down."

Speaking of his breezy 40-run knock, which included a 62-run stand for the eighth wicket with Rujul Bhatt, RP Singh wasn't too surprised by his efforts. "I have made 40 about seven or eight times," he said. "My batting approach was very simple: We had to make runs. That's why I hit out a little too. Things went well and I had a good partnership with Rujul that's why we got a good score.

There wasn't any pre-planned intention to attack, RP Singh revealed, and his play was purely due to an uncluttered idea of what to hit and what not. "I just hit the balls that were in my area. If they were not I concentrated on leaving or defending them. What is overpitched or wide, I will hit. Otherwise, I won't. I hit out more initially because they were bowling at the stumps more. Afterwards they started bowling outside off, so I also left more balls alone."