You could sense the noise rising with every swing of Mukul Choudhary’s bat. The 21-year-old left-hander, playing only his second season of IPL cricket, peeled off an unbeaten 50 from 26 deliveries to carry Lucknow Super Giants to a scarcely believable, last-ball victory over Kolkata Knight Riders on Wednesday night.
The bare facts first. Chasing 182 at Eden Gardens, Lucknow slumped to 128 for 7. Forty-three were still needed from the final three overs, the hosts holding all the aces. By the time the winning bye was scrambled off the last ball, Choudhary had struck five sixes and two fours, turning a near-certain defeat into back-to-back wins for Justin Langer’s side.
Langer called the innings “a massive moment” in the youngster’s career. “He’s so young, and he’s got that look in his eyes, he’s hungry,” the head coach said. “You know when you first come in, you try so hard, and [this victory will] just be a massive moment in his life and his career.”
Key passage of play
Over 18: Kartik Tyagi, armed with yorkers, conceded 14, Choudhary carving a length ball over deep cover to get the chase moving again.
Over 19: Cameron Green disappeared for 17, the sequence 6, dot, 4, 6 tilting the balance. Green’s slower-ball bouncer sat up, Choudhary’s wrists whipped it into the stand.
Final over: Lucknow still required 14. Two more sixes – the first flat over midwicket, the second high over long-on – levelled the scores before a hurried single and a fumble behind the stumps completed the job.
Aaron Finch and Dale Steyn, on television duty, analysed the mechanics. Finch highlighted the “long levers” that let Choudhary generate power without over-swinging; Steyn pointed to a “strong core and quick wrists” that keep his shape stable through contact – jargon enough for keen students, still digestible for the rest of us.
Langer, meanwhile, stressed the hours that have gone into broadening the youngster’s range. “What I love about him, there’s areas that we saw straight away,” he noted. “But he’s also gone away, he’s worked on the short ball. We’ve been doing drills every day with him, and then it came out in practice today, so he’s got a very curious mind.”
The coach admitted he had been drafting a different post-match message when Lucknow were seven down. “I was probably thinking about what I was going to say to our players, I thought we bowled brilliantly on this wicket, I thought we were outstanding,” he said. “Regardless of whether we win or lose, our bowling was excellent and our fielding was elite as well, so I was really pleased with that.”
That new-ball effort, spearheaded by Mohsin Khan’s 2 for 24, had held KKR to 181 for 6 – par at best on a true surface. Yet early wickets in the chase left Lucknow reliant on their lower order. Ayush Badoni’s watchful 30 gave Choudhary some breathing space, but it was the youngster who provided the punch, outscoring every partner and refusing singles only when the equation demanded boundary hitting.
The points table is still in its infancy, yet two narrow wins on the bounce have lifted LSG towards the top four. Langer believes such finishes can have an outsized effect in a season. “If you win the close ones, you get that little bit of belief, don’t you?” he said. “Those tight wins, it’s just like that magic tonic, isn’t it?”
Next up for Lucknow is a home fixture against Gujarat Titans on 12 April. Kolkata, searching for consistency of their own, head to Jaipur two days later. Both matches suddenly feel different after one extraordinary 26-ball intervention.
