Incredibly, one of the three dot balls that Romario Shepherd faced during his blistering innings on Saturday night at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium was off a free hit. That would come as scant consolation for Khaleel Ahmed who conceded 33 runs in the 19th over of the first innings between Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. That one missed opportunity in the over, in fact, cost a couple of records for Shepherd: he missed out on registering the most expensive over in IPL history, a four would have equalled 37 and a six would have broken that mark. And he eventually reached his half century of 14 balls, the second-joint fastest half century in the history of the Indian Premier League.
Shepherd now joins KL Rahul (for PBKS in 2018) and Pat Cummins (for KKR in 2022) to have scored 14-ball fifties in the IPL. The record of 13 balls is held by Yashasvi Jaiswal.
Those numbers sum up how ridiculous Shepherd’s onslaught was at the end of RCB’s innings that had actually faltered after a sensational start from Jacob Bethell and Virat Kohli. From 71/0 in the powerplay, they had just managed 88 runs in the next 12 overs. At the start of the 19th over, the scorecard read somewhat an ordinary 159/5, way below wbhat they were trending towards.
But then started the Shepherd show as he went 6, 6, 4, 6, 6 (+1nb), 0, 4. If that seeemed like a freak occurence against Khaleel who was struggling on the night, Shepherd went 4, 0, 4, 6, 6 against Matheesha Pathirana who until then was actually having one of his better nights this IPL season. Suddenly, his figures from 3/15 to 3/36.
“It was pretty incredible to watch, actually did not think he middled a lot of balls, but that just shows the man’s power,” opener Jacob Bethell, who scored an elegant half century himself earlier, said about Shepherd’s knock later.
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