Dhruv Jurel rarely hogs the camera. A tidy ‘keeper and third in after Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Yashasvi Jaiswal, he is usually the breath between two firecrackers. Yet take away his 21-ball fifty in the Eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals would almost certainly have been packing bags, not plane tickets to Qualifier 2.
The raw numbers are blunt. Royals’ first-wicket pair rattled up 147 from 50 balls – 97 of those to Sooryavanshi – but the rest of the innings produced only 96 runs plus sundries. Jurel’s burst bridged the gap.
“A 20-ball 50 is always brilliant. On any surface, if you can get that, it is always above par in most of the conditions,” said Ambati Rayudu on TimeOut. “It looks like second fiddle to what Sooryavanshi [did], but this knock in itself, I would rate it as high as a match-winning knock.”
Rayudu’s point was simple enough: Royals finished 20-30 up on par, and those runs proved decisive. Without them, “they have struggled big time if you look at the batting.”
Royals’ innings actually stalled in the middle. Jaiswal laboured to 29 from 29, still there in over 11 but without the usual acceleration. Riyan Parag injected 26 from 12, the only other contribution of note.
Jurel’s broader season has been a curious one. Aaron Finch called him “the complete game” back in April, yet by early May he was lumped in with the mid-season malaise that saw Royals slip from a sprint to a jog. Now, with a ticket to Ahmedabad at stake, he sits on 508 runs at 155.35 – not gaudy beside Sooryavanshi’s 680 at 242.85, but healthier than Jaiswal’s 426 at 153.23.
Does that seal the No. 3 berth? The player himself was cautious. “I won’t say I have locked anything,” he told reporters. “T20 has become the toughest format now, because even if you score 240, 250, it’s not safe. What I want to be is the sort of player who can bat at three, five, seven, anywhere, and whatever the match situation is, read it well and win the game.
“Whenever the two of them [Sooryavanshi and Jaiswal] are playing, and they are playing beautifully, I should try to build a partnership with them. Not try to hit from both ends, because then we might lose a wicket. I am meant to keep the ship steady and take it forward.
“I don’t want my lower-middle order to be batting in the 11th or 12th over. That’s what I have been doing, building a platform for the lower-middle order.”
The calm head extends behind the stumps. Many analysts rank Jurel the cleanest glove-man in the competition – a factor that perhaps emboldens Royals’ coaches to back him through leaner patches.
“I would say everyone is becoming fearless in terms of batting, and it comes from the support staff, how they back the players,” Jurel added. “If someone says you are going to play…” The thought trailed off, but the point landed: clarity of role breeds freedom.
For all the noise around Sooryavanshi’s sixes – 14 more of them the other night – Royals’ march is increasingly about complementary parts. A rocket at the top, a rudder at No. 3, a bowling attack that has rediscovered its yorker radar late in the piece. That balance faces its sternest audit in Qualifier 2. One more hurdle and Jurel, unsung but invaluable, could be adding a final chapter to a quietly authoritative campaign.
