Pool Heater

There's this thing Jos Buttler does when he plays his trademark scoop over the wicketkeeper. It's a sort of scissoring motion of his legs, with his right foot moving to the leg side just as the bowler enters his delivery stride. It seems to create a kind of desirable imbalance, tipping Buttler's head over to the off side and triggering his body to move in that direction in a free and rhythmic way, so that by the time the bowler has released, he's in just the right position - right foot now close to the off-side wide guideline, hips fully open - to meet the ball roughly below his head and flip it away behind him.

On Saturday night in Lucknow, a Rajasthan Royals batter went through exactly this routine, starting with the scissoring legs, and scooped Mohsin Khan for a delightfully audacious six over the keeper's head. This was a wicketkeeper who doesn't keep for Royals because Sanju Samson does that job, but this wasn't Buttler.

It was, instead, Dhruv Jurel. It wasn't an unexpected shot, really, because he's played it before - you might remember him hitting a similar shot off Arshdeep Singh during his debut IPL innings last year. And even if he hadn't, you would have come to expect moments like this if you had watched him bat with an understated swagger during his debut Test series two months ago.

This is a cricketer bursting with ability.

And yet Jurel had kind of disappeared from view for most of this IPL season, until this match. He'd started brightly enough, with a pair of 12-ball 20s in Royals' first two games. Since then, though, he'd gone DNB, 2, DNB, 6, 2, DNB.

This can happen to a middle-order batter in a T20 tournament - you come in with not many overs left, or you don't get to bat at all, and suddenly you've gone weeks without a meaningful contribution. Interviewed after Saturday's game, Jurel put this simply and eloquently, calling it the curse and the blessing of his role.

Any middle-order batter can go through a string of games like this, but not too many of them have had to sit padded up while R Ashwin bats ahead of them. Ashwin brings immense experience that Royals clearly trust, and he can be hugely useful as a utility, fill-the-gaps player, but there may have been times this season when you wondered what gap Royals were trying to fill by batting him at No. 5. They don't like sending in Shimron Hetmyer and Rovman Powell with too many overs remaining, but surely that was a gap Jurel could fill?

Against Punjab Kings on April 13, Royals even had a chance, it seemed, to use Jurel at the top of the order when Buttler was out injured. Even Ashwin, who has opened for them before, was out with a niggle. Instead, they opened with Tanush Kotian - an offspinner, primarily a bowler, who hadn't bowled a ball in that game.

It was another moment to be filed away under #JustRoyalsThings. This franchise has done the unexpected, out-of-the-box thing as a matter of course over this current auction cycle, and they've usually been able to point to their results - they got to the final in 2022, and they're top of the table this season - as proof that their methods work.

And they probably had one legitimate concern with Jurel batting in the middle overs: so far in his IPL career, he's shown a distinct preference for pace (strike rate of 174.31) over spin (116.36). It's the same reason why Royals hold Hetmyer back until the last four or five overs.

But Jurel's career has only begun, and his sample sizes are still too small to draw rigid conclusions from. At some point this season, Royals decided to give him a run of games at No. 5, and he batted there in three successive games when a No. 5 was needed, and each time he made a single-digit score.

Then came Saturday's game against Lucknow Super Giants, where he joined his captain Samson at the crease when Royals had gone from 60 for no loss to 78 for 3 in a chase of 197.

It's one of cricket's great joys when a team backs a player of obvious potential through a tricky period and that player comes good in a testing situation. Jurel's innings, his maiden T20 half-century, helped turn a potentially tense chase into a routine one, and beyond its relevance to the contest, it was also an innings of great relevance to the man who played it. No one in the Royals camp had been in any doubt that an innings like this was around the corner.

"Form is temporary, and batting at No. 5 is the toughest job in T20 cricket," Samson, who put on an unbroken 121 off 62 balls with Jurel, said. "A youngster like him, he has the composure as we have seen in Tests. We believed in him, he has been batting in the nets for one or two hours [at a stretch] and we knew it was a matter of time [before he delivered]."

On the eve of this match, Jurel had spoken about the collective nature of Royals' successes this season.

"We've played eight matches and won seven of them, and in those seven matches, we've had six different Man of the Match [winners]. So everyone in the team has been contributing. This is the biggest thing that wins matches. Whenever there's a requirement, a different player [steps up]. It's not like just one player is winning us games."

Royals have now won eight out of nine games. They still only have six Player of the Match awardees, with Samson winning it ahead of Jurel - their scores were neck-and-neck until Samson finished the game off with three sixes and a four in his last six balls - but they'll be thrilled that one more cog has fallen into place in a match-winning machine that's building an ominous head of steam.