One of the best iterations of the "it's so over, we're so back" meme is the Sopranos one. Just imagine one of the therapy sessions between Tony Soprano and his shrink Dr Melfi, where she calmly asks Tony: "Last week, you mentioned 'it's so over', today you are telling me 'we're so back'. What changed?"
Dr Melfi is sitting cross-legged, trying to be as free of judgement as she can be, intent on making the mercurial Tony discover the reason for wild swings in his outlook. You could well be asking T20 players this, especially Rinku Singh this year.
Literally last Sunday afternoon, it seemed so over for Rinku. His team had not won a match in six attempts, at 97 for 6 they were on their way to lose again, Rinku's season read 98 off 94 with three single-digit dismissals in his last three outings. All this after a duck against South Africa in the World Cup, India's only defeat at an ICC white-ball event since 2023 and Rinku's last match of the tournament.
At 19 off 17 in the match against Rajasthan Royals, who looked set to defend 155, Rinku got a half-volley from Ravi Bishnoi and sent it for a six that seemed to spread panic in the RR camp, which disintegrated immediately. Since then he has scored 117 off 68 balls without being dismissed, has registered his personal best in T20s, come within a whisker of hitting five consecutive sixes a second time, hit the winning shot to seal the Super Over after they had been 93 for 7 at one point, has taken five catches, saved runs in double digits in the field, and has taken home a match award.
We're so back. But what changed?
Not much from his own side, if you listen to Rinku. If anything at all, Cameron Green and Rovman Powell have batted ahead of him in two games, which might just have taken away the pressure of being looked at as a batter with a bigger role than he has been accustomed to.
The way Rinku bats has not changed much. You get a feeling he is one of the batters who relish a situation of strife because it lets them play themselves into the game. "I usually come in when four wickets are down," Rinku said while receiving his Player-of-the-Match award for his 83 off 51 in a low-scoring game against Lucknow Super Giants. "I only focus on how to move the game. Single, double, send the bad ball to the boundary."
It shows in Rinku's career numbers. He has never had a season in the IPL when he has scored at a strike rate of even 160 in the first 10 balls of the innings. He has been somewhat of a regular in KKR since 2022; his strike rate in the first 10 balls each year since then has been 132, 118, 159, 127 and 100 this year.
These are ordinary numbers for a middle-order batter, who is expected to go as soon as they step in. Then again it says something about his acceleration that he is one of the only three batters to have scored more than 1000 IPL runs from No. 5 or below in this period. He has done so at a strike rate of 150, which is not extraordinary by itself but remarkable in the context of his own slow starts and KKR's top four batters holding the distinction of the worst average and second-worst strike rate in this period.
Rinku is that old-fashioned "finisher" in the mould of the later-years MS Dhoni, who eschewed early risk and liked to take the game deep and turn it into a one-on-one contest with the bowler. In his greatest innings, when he hit five consecutive sixes in the last over to beat Gujarat Titans, Rinku had been 18 off 16 going into the last over of a chase of 205. Here he was 59 off 46 before he hit Digvesh Rathi for four consecutive sixes.
Rinku's method is simple: take what is on offer in early goings, hit the "ganda ball" (literal translation being dirty ball and not bad ball), take the game deep and back yourself in a one-on-one contest. This is a high-risk strategy, one that has divided opinion even on Dhoni.
That Rinku doesn't complicate things showed in how he was not even aware that LSG were going to have to bowl a less-than-ideal bowler in the 20th after having exhausted their fast bowlers looking to bowl KKR out in the first 19. "I had no idea," Rinku said. "I had just faced Shami bhai (in the 19th), and there was a spinner in front of me. That's when I came to know (that LSG were forced to bowl spin in the last over)."
Now came four sixes, but while KKR were in the field Rinku lived the extremes of "it's so over" and "we're so back" too often. All through that rollercoaster, especially with Kartik Tyagi bowling two beamers in the last over and conceding a six last ball to send the match into the Super Over, Rinku was perhaps the most expressive he has been in a match. His reactions ranged to from bemusement to veiled disgust not so successfully veiled to kissing the ball and celebrating wildly his fifth catch, which set them an easy target of 2.
About his own fielding, Rinku spoke with most candour. He thanked the "upar wala", the man upstairs, for making him so fit. "I run well, I cover ground, I enjoy my fielding."
That's the one basic flaw in the meme travelling to Rinku. Someone as thankful as him just for the natural fitness he is given is highly unlikely to make too much of being so over one day and so back the other, let alone discuss it with a specialist outside of cricket coaches. Not as long as there is a reasonable amount of "we're so back" to go with "it's so over".