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3 min readChennaiUpdated: May 10, 2026 06:41 PM IST
CSK batter Urvil Patel in action. (CREIMAS FOR IPL)
When Urvil Patel walked in the fourth over, Lucknow Super Giants would have breathed easy. With 204 to defend, they had seen the back of Sanju Samson early. In a season when Chennai Super Kings have blown hot and cold, they are an outfit that is overtly reliant on Samson to do the heavy-lifting. Here, in a must-win match, they needed a collective effort from the batting unit, to chase what will be their first 200-plus chase since the 2018 final. The stakes were high and the powerplay needed to maximised.
The firepower that CSK needed was provided by Urvil, the wicketkeeper batsman, who had been waiting the wings at the start of the season and hadn’t made full-use of the opportunities he had been offered so far. Off the first ball, he took a single. Then off the next seven deliveries he hit 6 sixes and one boundary. After clobbering pacer Avesh Khan for three successive sixes in the fifth over, off the next over bowled by leg-spinner Digvesh Rathi, he hit two consecutive sixes before hitting a boundary of the third over covers and pulled his head back in disappointment. But the next delivery disappeared into the stands. The 50 came of 13 deliveries as Chennai were off to a flier in the chase.
Those sixes had a pattern. Urvil’s range is limited. When he is in the middle, it is more like he is being reckless than pulling it off with utmost conviction. But there is one shot in his playbook that he plays with total conviction — to take the front-leg off and smack the ball towards the mid-wicket region. It is where each of those six sixes disappeared. The bowling was listless. They kept feeding him in his swinging arc and he happily obliged them. Chepauk was on its feet. The whistles were back.
Who is Urvil?
Hailing from Palanpur in Gujarat, a town known for his diamonds, Urvil owns the record for the fastest T20 century by an Indian, scored off 28 deliveries in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. It is the second-fastest in the world too. In the Vijay Hazare Trophy he has a 41-ball century. So aggressive batting is all that Urvil knows. “My game is more suited for white-ball,” he had told The Indian Express before. “Playing attacking cricket comes naturally to me.When you are opening, you have the licence to play freely. And as a batsman, you ought to put less price on your wicket and play high-risk cricket. I feel that comes naturally to me and liberates my game as well. My intention has always been about going on the attack.”
Last season despite his aggressive display, he had not found any takers at the big player auctions before CSK signed him up as a replacement players last season. Since then he has hardly looked back. “I really want to be part of India’s T20 side. Just looking at how they are playing, I feel it just suits my style. I’ve had the chance to speak to Hardik bhaiya… and he was also telling me how a batsman should approach a T20 game. That’s what I’m doing these days,” Urvil adds.
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