Mishra at peace with his place and pace in a rapidly-evolving game

Amit Mishra is no Imran Tahir. He might be 40 and pulling off a lush beard alright, but he doesn't make the long merry run while celebrating a wicket.

When he had Washington Sundar undone by a googly and caught slogging to Deepak Hooda at long off in the 19th over, he simply tucked his shirt in and walked back to the top of the run up for the next delivery. One of IPL's less-celebrated but prolific bowlers, it was just another scalp in an already rich tally of 166.

It might have been the first wicket for Mishra in two years in the IPL, but he found no drama in that, no cause for celebration. His team had already imposed itself on the opposition by the time he came on to bowl, and the leggie was just cleaning up in the end, merely playing his part in what was Krunal Pandya's party.

Three balls later, Adil Rashid was caught hitting to the same fielder. This time, as the LSG fielders took turns to come and hug the veteran spinner, Mishra quite unemotionally just sauntered out of the ground - replaced by Ayush Badoni, the Impact Substitute.

Mishra might be a few years younger than Tahir, but he sat huffing and puffing on his chair after the end of his day's work. He had done his bit: picked up two wickets and taken a superb diving catch to leave the team's batters with a comfortable total to chase, playing his part in reducing SRH to 108 for 7 in 19 overs when he left the field.

His stamina may have waned, but even in the fastest format of the game, his primary skill continues to serve him well. On a slowish track, LSG pacers were overusing their cutters and slower balls, and the spinners were mostly employed to dart. Neither Ravi Bishnoi nor Krunal Pandya are big turners of the ball, but their pace of operation - between 96kmph and 101kmph - wasn't allowing the SRH batters to break free.

On a pitch that, as SRH's head coach Brian Lara later conceded, was 'not conducive for batting', Bishnoi and Pandya got the ball to skid on and break the back of SRH's innings - initially with a flurry of wickets soon after the first Time Out and then by keeping Rahul Tripathi and Washington Sundar on a leash.

The hosts had found a blueprint, and even experimented with Deepak Hooda's offbreak to carry on with it, but Mishra's services were not availed till the 12th over. Afterall, his slow loopy legbreaks are quite unlike that of his younger teammates, who were proving effective enough to have already done the damage.

But Mishra is wily and experienced. He found a way to fit in his natural style in a blueprint that wasn't necessarily laid out for him. The ball started to turn, and the veteran leggie played to his strengths, sending down slow, loopy legbreaks - with its wide range of variations. His pace saw a spectrum of nearly 15kmps. His initial success, in fact, came in containing Washington Sundar - an unfavourable match-up, before passing the pressure on the batters to add power to their shots, only to have two of them caught in the deep.

In every realistic sense, Krunal owned the day - the best batter and the best bowler across teams on show. Yet, by the time the formalities were completed with Lucknow registering a comfortable five-wicket win, Mishra emerged beaming with a smile.

Not only had his team won their second consecutive home game, Mishra's two-wicket return had taken him closer to the top on the list of most successful Indian wicket-takers in IPL, a position he had only recently lost to fellow leggie - Yuzvendra Chahal. Fifteen years since he first featured in the IPL, a lot has changed - the understanding of T20, the way the game is played, Mishra's own personal ambitions. Yet, even in 2023, he is still able to make a mark.

But even in his success, he talks about an upcoming leggie in his team - Bishnoi. He is quite unlike Mishra in bowling style. He bowls much faster, gets lesser turn. As the senior pro says, he doesn't force batters to go after him and throw their wicket away, he waits for it. A neo-T20 fit. But Mishra takes pride in passing his understanding to a keen learner of the art.

Despite a commendable showing against SRH, it's unlikely Mishra will find too many such opportunities going forward in the tournament, especially with LSG having all bases covered, for all match-up scenarios, for all periods of play. But that's for a conventional T20 game, the one that's played on flatter and faster tracks, where the ball comes on easily to the bat, and races away to the fence just as easily.

While his body might be aging and other skill sets waning, the Impact Substitute rule has given greater relevance to his primary skill. If LSG do get more opportunities on the black-soil Lucknow track, maybe his legbreaks could prove an interesting trump card to slow down the fast-paced game.