Travis Head has made quite a reputation for himself in the IPL and in the white-ball format as the man who literally kills a match.
That's right. Head ensures the opposition is pummelled into submission to an extent where they have nowhere to hide and no way to mount a comeback.
Saturday night's blockbuster batting at the Arun Jaitley Stadium was a classic illustration what Head has been doing to opposition bowling attacks.
Ratcheting up his fifty in just 16 balls certainly did not break the IPL record but he had set the Sunrisers' Hyderabad up for a gargantuan total where at one point even 300 looked a realistic total.
Head's batting approach and style makes us jog our memories back to the 90s and a certain Mr Sanath Jayasuriya and his no-nonsense swagger.
Jayasuriya's explosive batting particularly in the 1996 World Cup has been a sort of template for opening left-handed batters looking to use the long handle early on in the innings.
Similarly, there is a ruthlessness and supreme intent that drives the batting of the Australian star which is comparable to the ferocity that the 'Butcher of Najafgarh' Virender Sehwag brought to the table in his heydays.
Sehwag would destroy bowling attacks at will and leave a deep psychological scar on them from which it becomes hard to recover. The bowlers who were at the receiving end when he struck his triple hundreds against Pakistan and South Africa and innumerable ODI matches at his peak.
Head has been leaving an imprint on the minds of cricket lovers with some knocks that have had a profound impact on the team that he has represented, be it Australia in the international game or the SRH in the IPL.
The 89 he struck against the Delhi Capitals had 11 fours and six maximums coming off 32 balls and he was going at a strike rate of 278.12 speaking volumes about the wrath he had unleashed on the hapless DC bowlers.
To think that this knock was coming on the back of a scintillating hundred struck off 40 odd balls against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the cauldron of the Chinnaswamy Stadium shows the kind of rampaging form that Head is in at the moment.
He struck the hundred at a strike rate of 248.78 giving a clear indication that the man bats with a clear intent and conviction and is ready to take down any bowler at any stage of the game.
The innings he played against Mumbai Indians in Hyderabad where he smashed 62 off 24 balls with nine fours and three sixes at a strike rate of 258.33 was the first half-century for him in this IPL and had given a sneak peek of the devastation he was bringing upon the opposition bowling attacks.
With the IPL 2024 still in its early days, Head could leave a lasting impression on Sunrisers Hyderabad fans as well as IPL watchers and cricket fans with his unmissable smashathons.
