“MS Dhoni helped me evolve as a cricketer”, says Washington Sundar

The RCB off spinner Washington Sundar has credited the former Indian captain MS Dhoni for his evolution as a cricketer.  Sundar played alongside Dhoni at Rising Pune Supergiant and although Dhoni wasn’t captaining the team in the 2017 season, he still had a lot to tell Sundar from behind the stumps.

“The fact that I played in RPS under Mahi bhai helped me evolve as a cricketer and since then I have been learning and evolving as a bowler as well,” Washington Sundar was quoted as saying recently.

According to Sundar, one of the things that he is doing well as a bowler these days is he is releasing the ball late. He is keeping a close look at the feet of the batsman because that tells him what the batsman is about to do and he then changes his length accordingly.

Sundar’s success has surprised a few people because he is somebody who doesn’t turn the ball a great deal, but he is so accurate with h is lengths that he doesn’t let the batsman fully commit to one particular shot.

Washington Sundar is playing for RCB in IPL 2020

The Tamil Nadu youngster, who is featuring for RCB in IPL 2020, just keeps hitting the good length again and again and eventually the batsman has to play the risky shot against him to release the pressure because they can neither get onto the front foot properly nor on the back foot.

Apart from last night when Chris Gayle smashed him for four sixes, Sundar was not hit for a single six in the 7 games that he had played in IPL 2020 before that and that was quite an achievement given the fact that RCB had played on some of the flat pitches at the starting stages of the tournament.

And, it’s not just with the ball that Sundar is contributing with, he is contributing pretty decently with the bat as well for RCB down the order. In fact in the last game against KXIP, Sundar was sent to bat ahead of AB de Villiers as the RCB team management thought he could take the leg spinners on.