Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy: Long before Urvil Patel joined the Chennai Super Kings camp in IPL 2026, the Gujarat wicketkeeper-batter was polishing his power-hitting game under his long-term coach Prakash Patani in Palampur.
The rest days from his domestic cricket commitments, especially when in Ahmedabad, meant Urvil would go to Palampur and train under Patani at the ground from seven in the morning till 12 noon and would refuse to leave until he had perfected hitting 150 to 200 sixes.
That unglamorous, self-imposed regimen now has yielded a rich return on investment for Urvil by hitting a 13-ball fifty – the joint fastest half-century in IPL history – against Lucknow Super Giants and have the 33,000 spectators MA Chidambaram Stadium chant ‘ Uuur-vil, uuur-vil’ in chorus.
Urvil entered CSK’s playing eleven only after Ayush Mhatre was ruled out for the season with a hamstring injury, has since become the most compelling subplot in the franchise’s injury-hit campaign. His match-winning performance of 65 off just 23 balls in acing a chase of 204 has kept CSK’s playoffs hopes alive.
What stood out from Urvil’s whirlwind knock against LSG was not just the sheer power in the strokes, but the clarity in execution. The aggression had a method, the bat swing was fluent, the base was compact and once he spotted a scoring opportunity, there was no respite for bowlers.
Equally striking was his intent to score fast, something which has been conspicuously absent in the CSK set-up for some time. For years, CSK’s approach revolved around control and experience. Urvil is the total opposite of it – explosive and incredibly aggressive – a dimension that has given the side some freshness in their batting line-up.
Seeing Urvil unleash carnage while being glued to his TV, Palampur-based Patani, lovingly called ‘Dronacharya’ by the wicketkeeper-batter due to the Mahabharata references, still remembers one shot from that remarkable Sunday with immaculate detail: the slower ball from veteran pacer Mohammed Shami was outside the off-stump and Urvil just easily thumped it over long on.
“The 86-metre six he hit off Mohammed Shami – that really stood out for me. All the shots came out really well from his bat, but I am a little more fond of that shot. After all, it came off the ball of an international cricketer like him. I was thinking that it would be good if he makes a record and that it should somewhere be the biggest record in the competition by a batter,” said Patani in an exclusive conversation with IANS, ahead of CSK facing LSG in Lucknow on Friday.
The work ethic Patani describes did not begin with this IPL season. It is, by his account, the default mode of a cricketer who has never treated preparation as optional. “This year, with IPL around, he would say, ‘Sir, please help me with preparation, as T20 is the focus format now. He worked very hard for six hitting and was very attentive in preparation,” he said.
This self-accountability extends, according to Patani, into every other corner of Urvil’s preparation after entering the IPL bandwagon, though his demeanour is still the same. His lunch and dinner diet is monitored with care, while his fitness work is consistent.
“It doesn’t feel like he is an IPL player. He comes alone. He is very simple, very grounded, completely normal and can talk easily with anyone. He doesn’t have any airs that I am such a big player now.”
There was tension within the Patani and Patel household when Urvil didn’t get his chances and when Mhatre got injured, the coach reminded his student about grabbing his opportunities now.
“Before Sunday’s match, we did talk about upcoming games. When he wasn’t playing, I told him to have patience as an opportunity was in the making once Mhatre was declared unfit. After that game, I told him ‘Well played.’ He said ‘Thank you sir, aapki kripa hai (it’s all your grace). Aapne mere upar achi mehnat kari, aur yeh uska parinaam hai (You did work very hard on me and all of this is a result of it).’”
Urvil grew up in a family where cricket was not a familiar language. Both his parents are schoolteachers and when they recognised their son’s aptitude for the sport, they enrolled him under Patani. “I worked hard and taught him how to play. Parents are there and they have supported him a lot – drop in morning and pick him later. They have struggled a lot, and we are happy he is doing well.”
Kirat Damani, former Gujarat captain and now the chief men’s selector at the Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA), has observed Urvil since the latter’s U23 days. What he watched develop over four years was a textbook case of a batter with exceptional natural gifts being more consistent in an unforgiving format – seen from him hitting two centuries in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.
“In all the local and selection games, which formed the basis of selection into the Gujarat team, he was one of those players who would very easily impress the selectors with his clean hitting. Hitting sixes and boundaries for him has always been very easy. Earlier, there was a lack of consistency in terms of the hitting he used to do – like convert into big knocks after getting good starts.
“But like the great Virender Sehwag, when he started, I think, selection of shot making becomes very important when a batter has too many shots and that’s exactly what happened with Urvil. He started off well, but he would later falter. At a score of 20s and 30s, he would end up giving away his wicket and play a shot which he could have avoided,” said Damani to IANS.
The remedy, Damani said, was not primarily technical. It came through sustained, direct conversation about what the team needed from Urvil at any given moment. “I have worked very closely with him and at least in the last two years, I have been speaking with him a lot that he is the natural match winner in white-ball cricket and his focus should be trying to win more and more games for Gujarat.
“Therefore, we appointed him as the captain as well and is a very, very good wicket-keeper – very athletic and very strong. I had been talking and trying on how Urvil can convert his talent into performances that can win games. He has come a long way – like he has started taking the responsibility and accountability of understanding the way he is required and needed by the team to play.
“Gujarat also has been playing fantastic cricket in the last couple of seasons in T20s and lot of credit for that goes to Urvil as well because he opens up the innings and sets up the game for us. He has been scoring more than one century, which is not usual in T20 cricket. He has come a long way and I am sure that this is the beginning of greater things for him.”
Damani, also a prominent real estate and commercial corporate lawyer, further believes an IPL century is a question of when it will come from Urvil’s bat, instead of whether it would come. “There are a lot of talented players. But very few of them end up really delivering when there is pressure, a serious need to win and when there is a steep target. That knock had way more and bigger value compared to just any other knock – he had to make a mark while not having got a chance earlier, and the team badly needed a win.”
“I am glad that he has made most of the chances. The way he batted, it was a very timely knock for the team also because CSK did require that win in the context of staying relevant for reaching the playoffs. I think a century is just coming down the road for him.
“I hope that next time he gets a start, he closes with a big hundred because he is used to getting centuries in this format of the game. I am hoping that a couple of knocks here will again open up a beautiful chance for him to play beyond the Gujarat state and the IPL – maybe for India or India A in the T20 format.”
Inside the CSK dressing room, Patani said, Patel has spoken of consistent backing from MS Dhoni, captain Ruturaj Gaikwad and the franchise’s support staff. Sunday’s astonishing knock was also Urvil’s first IPL fifty, and when it arrived, carried a significance that had been decided long before the game was played.
Patani revealed that Patel had quietly resolved, somewhere in the months of pre-dawn sessions and solitary drives to the ground, that the milestone of getting a fifty in the IPL would be for his father. When Urvil got his fifty in 13 balls, he folded his hands in silent prayer and took out a note from his pocket, which said, ‘This is for you Papa,’ apart from a line written for his family kuldevi (goddess) in Gujarati.
Regardless of how the remainder of IPL 2026 unfolds for Urvil or CSK, Patani remains convinced that bigger honours are in store for the young batter. “He will play for India now. If not today, he will play for India tomorrow because he has so much power and it can be utilised well. That boy has hunar (talent). He is working hard, performing well and that’s what we want, as it will be good for both Chennai and him.”
Article Source: IANS