The Indian Premier League auction table is one arena where a bit of showboating is inevitable. Last year, it was Cameron Green’s turn to make a fortune as Mumbai Indians’ flaunted their shiniest buy. On Sunday, Green close to two meters tall, proved his ₹17.5 crore worth in front of another boisterous home crowd; leading the five-time winners into the playoffs with his maiden IPL ton.
When Green swatted a full Bhuvneshwar Kumar delivery away to the mid-wicket boundary to bring up his hundred, he jumped in joy and kissed the MI crest. It was an expression of what it means to the modern player – a 23-year-old Australian tipped to be a leading all-format all-rounder of the game – to win a big match for his franchise.
To not fall for the hype, Green articulated his thoughts in five different ways, why the talk of him being the next big thing was ‘just words’.
“The whole MI set-up has been awesome. As soon as I got here, there’s been no pressure (of the price tag) from them. So, I could go out and play with as much intent as I can,” he said after his unbeaten century against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Green said the right thing but there is never a no-pressure moment in the IPL. Only the previous match against Lucknow Super Giants would have left him tense, where MI failed to chase down 11 runs in the final over. Green took most of the strike and couldn’t finish the job against the uncapped Mohsin Khan.
With his 100* (47b, 8×4, 8×6) he more than made amends. Brian Lara, SRH’s head coach, called Green’s knock ‘brutal’. “He outmuscled us,” he said.
Green called it his ‘best knock in T20 cricket’. There’s another reason why. Every time Green hasn’t batted at No 3, the word from the MI camp is, it’s not to straightaway expose him to spin. On Sunday, Green came in to bat in the third over. Mayank Dagar with his left-arm spin was introduced in the fourth over and Green straightaway took him on.
“When you are chasing 200, you obviously have to show pretty good intent at the top. Just being at the other end with Rohit, I was trying to smack the spinners and he was batting beautifully against the pace bowlers,” Green said.
The SRH spin attack wasn’t the most potent on the day and the pitch batting friendly, but the knock would have given Green some confidence ahead of the spin trial that awaits him at Chennai against LSG on Wednesday.
For a Western Australian, a strong back-foot player who grew up aspiring to bat like Ricky Ponting, Green’s spent most part of the last four months in India. The learnings are priceless.
“Getting exposed any time to subcontinent conditions – as an Australian you are not really used to how low the ball skids at times, how much it spins at times – any experience you get over here is so valuable for us who bat in pretty different conditions,” he said.
Green, still young in age, is confident he’s learned enough to ‘pass on’ experience to the Australian boys for the year-ending ODI World Cup in India.
The Indian team has twice been at the receiving end of Green’s powerful displays; recently in the Test match at Ahmedabad and in the Mohali T20I, last year. Now, the all-rounder would be gunning to put on a performance at the ODI showpiece, later.
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