Seeing urvil

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.