IPL 2024: 'This Is What I've Been Doing In Domestic Cricket,' Says RR's Riyan Parag On His Success At No. 4 Position
After slamming back-to-back half-centuries in the first two games, 29-ball 43 and an unbeaten 45-ball 84, Parag smashed another fifty on Monday night as RR hammered MI by six wickets with 27 balls to spare.
Yuzvendra Chahal and Trent Boult starred with the ball picking 3/11 and 3/22 off their four overs, respectively, to restrict Mumbai Indians to 125/9. During the chase, RR lost Yashasvi Jaiswal early in the chase and then Sanju Samson and Jos Buttler got out in quick succession. Parag then anchored the chase with an unbeaten 54. He hit five boundaries and three sixes in his knock to make it three out of three for RR in IPL 2024.
Speaking about his performance after the match, the batting all-rounder said, "Actually I have simplified everything instead of trying to do a lot of things. Before when I was not getting runs, I would think about it too much, try and do different stuff altogether, and then it would not work out. This year the goal was to keep it simple - watch the ball and hit the ball."
Parag, previously deployed as a finisher by the Royals, has now been elevated to the number four spot in the batting order. This position is not unfamiliar to the 22-year-old, as he excelled in it during the latest edition of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, where he dominated the run-scoring charts with an impressive tally of 510 runs, boasting an average of 85 and a striking rate of 182.79.
"I have said it before, when I play domestic (cricket) this is the exact type of situation I go in to bat. When Jos (Buttler) bhai got out, and Ash (R Ashwin) bhai got out a little after, I was like, 'okay, this is what I do. This is what I've been doing for the last six months playing domestic cricket'. So, it was pretty simple to calculate everything," he said on his batting position in IPL 2024.
Parag, who started his IPL journey in 2019, began in a promising fashion as he scored 160 runs in five innings in his debut season. However, subsequent editions didn't pan out as successfully, with the batter only surpassing the 100-run mark once in four editions, and finishing with averages below 20 each time.
Now, in the 2024 edition, he also got the Orange Cap as the leading run-scorer in IPL 2024 with 181 runs alongside RCB's Virat Kohli.
"I've had three-four years of not performing at all, or even performing if it's one match a season. You go back to the hotel room and think of yourself that when you know you can do something and it's not coming, the performances are not coming, you get back to the drawing board.
"I tried finding what was wrong and I figured out that I was not practising at this level enough. So I went back after the (2023) season and practised very hard. And I think that's showing now. I practised these types of balls, these types of scenarios a lot. Hence the performances," Parag signed off.