Should Nitish Rana consider himself to have bounced back to form, or consider himself unlucky for getting stumped on a wide delivery by Ravichandran Ashwin? Well, the answer has to be a yes, and no. The southpaw batter scored his first fifty in the IPL in almost two years, and went on to put Rajasthan Royals in a position of strength with his 81 from 36 deliveries on Sunday, vs Chennai Super Kings at Guwahati.
Nitish Rana vs CSK, IPL 2025
After failing in the first two matches, the management sent him at No. 3 and the ploy worked instantly, as he started piercing the gaps, and even went for the aerial shots, with equal ease. The fifty meant, this was his first since May 2023, again vs CSK. To go with that, he slammed 10 fours and five sixes in his innings, the most by him ever. His previous best was again vs Chennai, in 2020, where he had scored 14 boundaries.
𝐑𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐑𝐚𝐧𝐚
— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) March 30, 2025
A beautiful innings of 81(36) comes to an end
Nitish Rana thoroughly entertained tonight with his exquisite range of batting
Updateshttps://t.co/V2QijpWpGO#TATAIPL | #RRvCSK | @rajasthanroyals | @NitishRana_27 pic.twitter.com/8k5WrKxMdn
It wouldn’t be wrong to say, that this is Nitish’s best innings in the IPL ever. Notably, his strike-rate of 225 is also the best in all the innings, he has scored a fifty in IPL. That is just his innings stats, in a nutshell. But that isn’t the most remarkable part of the innings Nitish Rana played.
Endures Poor Form in 2024/25
What one needs to understand is, for the last year or two, he was in poor form, notwithstanding the format he played in. As far as IPL is concerned, last year for KKR he just played two matches, and was let go by the franchise. There in two innings he had scored 42 runs at an average of 21 and a strike-rate of 123.
Rana Ji sings and hits different, for real.
— Rajasthan Royals (@rajasthanroyals) March 30, 2025pic.twitter.com/nIQgp3Si3e
In the UPT20 2024, in 8 innings he had an average of 13 and scored only 104 runs. Then in the Ranji Trophy for UP, he scored 150 runs in 6 innings at an average of 25. In the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he averaged only 13.88 and scored 111 runs. While in the Vijay Hazare Trophy he just played one match and scored 17 runs.
Undoubtedly, after going through all this, he was on his way to get his maiden IPL ton, but was undone by Ashwin’s magic, who saw Rana step down, and decided to bowl it wide. MS Dhoni took care of the rest, thereafter.
