Mumbai captain Prithvi Shaw has been a sensation in the Vijay Hazare Trophy this season and has scored three 150-plus scores including a 227 not out against Puducherry, and has helped Mumbai set up a final against Uttar Pradesh in the white-ball domestic competition.
It was after a forgettable Australia tour, with a zero and four runs in the first Test in Adelaide, that the young Prithvi Shaw found his groove with the bat again. In 7 innings, in the Vijay Hazare trophy, Shaw has recorded 754 runs averaging an exceptional 188.50 with a strike rate of 134.88.
With his 165 against Karnataka, in the semifinal of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, Prithvi (754*) went past Mayank Agarwal’s tally of 723 runs – which was the previous best aggregate in the competition. And the Mumbai captain still has a final to go.
“Ravi (Shastri) Sir and Vikram (Rathour) Sir made me realize where I was going wrong. I had to find a solution. Just go back to the nets and fix it. There were small mistakes that I was making. Those two innings (Adelaide, pink-ball Test) made me look bad. My back lift was the same but my bat was coming down slightly away from my body. There was an issue with the initial movement. I was in a fixed position. I needed to keep my bat closer to my body, which I wasn’t doing,” Shaw told Indian Express about his time of struggle after the Australia tour.
“I was in complete tension when I was dropped after the first Test. I got a feeling like I was worthless though I was happy that the team was doing well. I said to myself ‘I need to pull up my socks’. There is a saying, ‘hard work beats talent’. I told myself all this talent is fine but it’s of no use if I don’t work hard. It was the saddest day of my life (when he was dropped). I went to my room and broke down. I felt like something wrong was happening. I needed answers quickly.”
It was, in fact, the legendary Sachin Tendulkar’s advice that helped Shaw with his struggles with the bat. The 21-year-old met Tendulkar after coming back from Australia.
“I didn’t speak to anyone, I was getting calls but I was not in the frame of mind to speak to people. My mind was messed up. My bat was coming down from the gully area, but that’s how I have scored runs all my life. The problem was the way I was getting out and I had to fix it immediately,” he added.
“I met Sachin sir (Tendulkar) after I came back, he said don’t make too many changes and to just play as close to the body as I could. I was late on the ball. So during the entire Australia tour, I worked on that part. Maybe it was because I had gone to Australia after playing in Dubai (IPL).”
