File photo of Prithvi Shaw.
Prithvi Shaw is in the form of his life as the batsman took his domestic side Mumbai to Vijay Hazare Trophy final with his fourth century in the tournament's season. The batsman also is currently the highest run-getter of the season and surpassed Devdutt Padikkal for the spot after a century against Karnataka in Delhi while leading Mumbai to win on Thursday.
His rich run of form has almost everyone forget that not so long ago, in fact back in December, the batsman's batting technique came under the scanner with poor batting display in the IPL 2020 followed by even miserable account of his batting in the Australia Test series where he perished to pacer Mitchell Starc without any fight.
The batsman was soon dropped from the starting line-up and Prithvi revealed that the world around him just collapsed.
"I was in complete tension when I was dropped after the first Test. I got a feeling like I was worthless though I was happy that the team was doing well," Prithvi told Indian Express. "I said to myself ‘I need to pull up my socks’. There is a saying, ‘hard work beats talent’.
"I told myself all this talent is fine but it’s of no use if I don’t work hard. It was the saddest day of my life (when he was dropped). I went to my room and broke down. I felt like something wrong was happening. I needed answers quickly."
He further said he turned to Indian legend Sachin Tendulkar for advice, who suggested not to make too many changes.
"I didn’t speak to anyone, I was getting calls but I was not in the frame of mind to speak to people. My mind was messed up. My bat was coming down from the gully area, but that’s how I have scored runs all my life. The problem was the way I was getting out and I had to fix it immediately. I met Sachin sir (Tendulkar) after I came back, he said don’t make too many changes and to just play as close to the body as I could. I was late on the ball. So during the entire Australia tour, I worked on that part. Maybe it was because I had gone to Australia after playing in Dubai (IPL)," he said.
The batsman also revealed that he understood the flaw in his batting after having a conversation with coach Ravi Shastri and batting coach Vikram Rathour and did the hard work to improve it at nets
