VVS Laxman is happy with the SRH bowling pair at the death – Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan. “He is finding rhythm and along with Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar) brings a lot of variety to death bowling for which SRH is known.” Laxman like many cricket fans is in awe of Natarajan’s yorker, however, T Natarajan delivering yorker after yorker is quite ‘familiar’ to his childhood friends.
Natarajan’s rise is another fairy tale of Indian cricket. With father being a porter at a railway station, and mother a daily wage earner Natarajan had zero connection with cricket. It was his passion, grit, and determination that helped him made his mark in the local cricket circles. He eventually made it to the Tamil Nadu Premier League. The southern domestic T20 league over the past few years became a vivid platform for many youngsters to be spotted by selectors at a higher level.
Before making it to the Tamil Nadu Premier League, Natarajan made his Ranji Trophy debut for Tamil Nadu back in 2015-2016. But it was TNPL followed by List-A cricket that helped him improve his ability and earn recognition. In the meantime, despite being taken by Kings XI Punjab in 2017 for Rs. 3 crores,
Natarajan failed to achieve success in the Indian Premier League. He was expensive, returning with an economy rate of 9.07 across six games. Eventually, he saw an IPL transfer within a year but had to warm the Sunrisers Hyderabad bench for the next two editions.
Thangarasu Natarajan was ready to wait but not keen to give up. During this long journey, he kept working on his bowling. This is why Natarajan was Tamil Nadu’s death bowler in the white-ball cricket for the entire season. He had a key role behind the journey of Tamil Nadu to the final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament. He took 13 wickets and maintained an economy rate below six throughout the tournament.
Source: Twitter (IPL)
Natarajan had to deal with injury earlier in his career, his action was questioned, but he never lost the track. Eventually, the last game of Sunrisers Hyderabad against Delhi Capitals showed why he is here. The left-arm quick bowled six consecutive yorkers in a brilliant display of death bowling. With most of the teams struggling to contain the opponent in the death overs, if Natarajan can continue his yorkers it will give SRH an edge in the matches to come. Already the data shows SRH have been leading the yorker race in this year’s IPL against their all seven opponents.