On Thursday night, Rashid started his spell in the 11th over with everything set up for him to run through CSK, who were 109 for 5 chasing 230 for victory. Rashid started with a single to Dewald Brevis but was tonked for six by Shivam Dube next ball, pitched up on a straightish, hit-me line to the left-hand batter Dube. Next ball, Dube was gone, though that was more Shubman Gill than Rashid with a running-and-diving catch. Anshul Kamboj walked out and hit Rashid for six too, but after 1-0-14-1, Rashid ended with 2-0-18-3. A good day’s work.
“In this game, when you’re defending 230, you will go for runs. It’s not something like you’re going to bowl 18 to 20 dot balls,” Rashid said. “The batter is going after you, but for you as a bowler, one thing is how I’m going to make it super hard and tougher for him to hit that ball for a boundary. I felt like on the first ball I bowled to him [Dube] – he hit that [for] six – it was just an easy ball for him. But ‘let me just try to bowl a harder one away from him and see how it goes’. For that length, line was so important. In such a game, the batters have no option but to go after the bowler. That’s why we practice so that mentally and physically we are ready for any condition.”
“You have good days, bad days, and I feel [the way] you manage yourself on good days, you have to know how to manage yourself on bad days as well,” Rashid said. “Whenever I had a bad day, I never put that too much in the mind. That gives me so much learning, and that’s why we keep getting better because we keep learning. And if you keep doing well, you don’t have any bad days, I don’t think so, you can learn a lot.
“And regardless of what comes in the result, I never change my practice. Keep doing that hard work. If I do well, if I don’t do well, I know what makes me a better bowler – and what makes me a better bowler is to hit the right area consistently. And that’s something which is key, especially nowadays when batters straightaway go after you.
“End of the day, when you go back to a room and you see your pitch map – that matters to me the most. So every game I play I ask the video analyst to send me the pitch map, and I see where I pitch the maximum deliveries and what I can do better. If I miss my line, why did I miss it? So I just work on that. I don’t really think about what came up in the result.”
Rashid had two mediocre seasons. An average one in 2024, when he picked up ten wickets in 12 games at an economy rate of 8.40, and then a really poor one in 2025: nine wickets in 15 games with an economy rate of 9.35. This year, the wickets have come (19) and the economy rate is much better: 8.72.
“Winning nine games out of 14 is a great feeling for the team,” Rashid said of the ongoing season. “Overall, we have a great percentage of winning games. It is just about keeping things simple. We are not here to think about being top four or top two, but things will come as long as you keep it simple.”
