There are a very few matches in a batter-dominated tournament like the Indian Premier League when a bowler walks away taking the limelight, and it’s even more special when the bowler is an old-school medium pacer like Sandeep Sharma, banking more on his accuracy than at breaking speed records but still hurts the opposition with same intensity but with a whisper.

On Monday, Sandeep returned to action after recovering from a side strain that kept him out of Rajasthan Royals’ last five matches, and made an instant impact by grabbing the IPL 2024 season’s best figures of 5 for 18 against Mumbai Indians to help the Royals consolidate their stay atop the IPL points table.

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Sandeep, who has been in the IPL for more than a decade, plying his trade for various franchises, has largely remained a silent predator as his performances have more often been overshadowed in the batter-dominated tournament.

Also with the emergence of express quicks and those being promoted by cricket pundits to be fast-tracked to the national team, the 30-year-old medium pacer has kept himself evolving and up-skilling to meet the growing demands of the T20 format.

Sandeep primarily used to be the powerplay specialist during his stint with the Punjab Kings and the Sunrisers Hyderabad between 2014 and 2020. He picked up 49 powerplay wickets during this time – more than any other bowler in the competition – with an economy rate of less than seven runs an over. While his career trajectory showed a downward trend post 2020, managing only five wickets in the 2021 and 2022 editions, and failed to attract any buyer in the 2023 auctions, he got a lucky break when the RR franchise recruited him as a replacement.

The disappointment of failing to find any takers in the IPL 2023 auction hurt Sandeep and left him rethinking on bowling. The right-armer took it as a challenge and went back to the drawing board to up-skill himself by adding a few variations to his bowling. With the addition of the knuckle balls, and a variety of cutters, Sandeep found himself as a death-over specialist in RR colours.

While the new ball remains Sandeep’s first love, he came up with an excellent spell towards the end of MI innings that eventually restricted the visitors to 179 in Jaipur on Monday.

After sending Ishan Kishan back with a 121.2kph outswinger that the MI opener could only edge back to the wicketkeeper, Sandeep nipped out Suryakumar Yadav with a scrambled-seam inswinger to reduce MI to 20 for 3 in 3.1 overs.

“I love bowling with the new ball. If you ask me today also where I feel more comfortable or (am) happy to bowl, I will say with the new ball,” he said.

He then came back to pick three wickets, including MI’s top-scorer Tilak Varma (65), Gerald Coetzee and Tim David in the final over of the innings, to keep things under control.

“If you are bowling in the death overs, it can go both ways. Sometimes you can go for runs, sometimes if you bowl well – and if you are lucky enough – you can end up getting wickets. That is what happened tonight,” Sandeep said after the match.

“With the old ball, you have to adapt and evolve as a bowler. You have seen in this year’s IPL that the bowlers are going (for) big (runs). The batters are coming and swinging. Because of this Impact Player (rule), we have an extra batsman, so high-scoring games are there. You have to have a big heart in the death overs,” he reckoned.

While Sandeep understands his limitations, he showed that the old-school style of medium pace bowling can still rattle opposition teams, even on a surface where both teams scored at close to nine an over, and even Jasprit Bumrah went at 9.25, he bowled with an economy of 4.5 to wrap up a rare day when a bowler grabs the limelight in a batter-dominated tournament.