It looked like a clean catch, Sanju Samson’s drive was meant to go more towards the mid-off/cover but since the ball hit the inside of his bat, it looped towards Yuzvendra Chahal in the follow-through. it did not have the pace, so Chahal had to fall to his right to get his fingers underneath the ball. Samson started walking before the umpires thought that it was better to route Sanju’s departure through technology than to give Twitter another reason to erupt with badly captured screenshots that are often used as per convenience. So, the drama began… Frame after frame, ultra-zoom was summoned.

The thing with most things ‘ultra’ in life is that they don’t help much, and make things hazy when you want them to give a clear picture. The real-time footage, observed through an unadulterated vision that does not get into the details trumps the ultra, at least when it comes to catches like these. Anyway, better sense prevailed and Samson was declared out, handing Chahal his first wicket of the game.

Chahal was elated. In a team full of burly men with ripped physique, his frail demeanor has been creating more ripples than anybody else in the past few weeks. By the time, Royal Challengers Bangalore ended their fielding stint, Yuzi looked drained. You could not blame him for that. He had bowled four top-class overs with 10 dot deliveries, more importantly, he had scalped three wickets, a performance that was duly appreciated with a Man of the Match reward. T20s don’t see that often. Later in the day, Shreyas Iyer’s 38-ball 88 in a pan-size Sharjah was preferred over Anrich Nortje’s 3/33.

“When you get a wicket off the first ball, your confidence goes a little bit high. So, I knew, they were not going to take the chance, so I varied my pace. It’s good for spinners the grounds are bigger and you can give more flight and bowl proper googlies and sliders,” said Chahal with a beaming smile while receiving the Man of the Match award.

The smile has been there for a while now. Before the season was to start, the forever-easy-going Chahal captained his side to victory in the intra-squad practice game. That he captained a side against Virat Kohli-led team while AB de Villiers was a part of the camp might have come as a surprise to many but not the coaches at RCB who think that the funny exterior belies a true cricketing genius that the leggie is. 

His understanding of the game and how he goes about leaves the opposition befuddled at times. But like a true humble operator, Yuzi has often credited Virat Kohli for giving him the confidence a bowler needs. A few days ago, he had said, “It’s been like 6 years now. Virat bhaiya has always been full of confidence. He always says you’re the captain of your bowling whatever field you want, just go with that and if it’s not working then we will go for plan B.”

The 30-year-old now has taken eight wickets in the four matches in the tournament so far, and by the time this write-up reaches the number of desired reads, he may have added a few more to the tally. Mohammed Shami and Kagiso Rabada too have the same number of wickets but Yuzi’s average is the best among the three. He calls it heavenly bowling in the UAE due to the conditions and of course the bigger grounds. This is where he made his debut for RCB six years ago and since then has grown to be one of the most reliable names in the limited-overs’ format.

And a lot of this success has come from the fact that he believes in keeping things simple, trusting his skills, and trapping the batsmen in a format that has been tailor-made for them. After all, you don’t always have to rely on ‘ultras’ to get a clear picture, right?