If there is one cricketer who feels like completely different people on and off the pitch, it’s Arshdeep Singh. The Punjab Kings fast bowler is the fieriest competitor when in his jersey, stone-faced and remorseless as he nails yorkers and variations, but a total jokester off it – seen in the plethora of Instagram reels and Snapchat content he enjoys posting, always with the biggest smile.
After reaching the 100-wicket mark in the IPL with 3/22 against MI at the Wankhede Stadium, there isn’t one without the other. Just as much as having access to top-tier coaching ensures he can tune his bowling in the most competitive environments in the world, it is important for Arshdeep to receive the support from fans across the country, who connect with him via his presence online.
“I love the support and a lot of credit goes to my social media,” said Arshdeep in the post-match presentation on Thursday night, reflecting on the support he gets from crowds throughout the country. “I love making reels and I love posting on social media. So a lot of them know me [for] reels. I love it and I’ll keep doing that for them. You’ll see a lot of reels coming.”
Arshdeep has made it a tradition to whip out his camera and gather his teammates to shoot quick videos after trophy victories, going back to the 2024 T20 World Cup – many of his generation and savvy in the ways of internet trends, and others of a slightly older vintage who need some more coercion.
Ricky Ponting’s pep talk takes Arshdeep back to his best
It speaks to Arshdeep’s chemistry with his team that he felt the ease to go to coach Ricky Ponting and tinker with his bowling, after starting the IPL in an errant fashion with many extras as he tinkered with something new. He credited the Australian legend for helping him find what works again.
“It feels good and it goes back to having a chat with Ricky after one of the training sessions. I told him I wasn’t feeling the way I should feel, the ball is not coming out of my hand really well and [I] had a nice pep talk with him,” explained Arshdeep. “How I can keep myself fresh mentally and how I was just expecting too much out of myself and not letting things to be simple and just going by the flow.”
Arshdeep started his night with regulation away swing to Ryan Rickelton, conceding only one run as he kept things simple and effective. He was rewarded with the South African’s wicket the next over, albeit with one of his looser balls, but followed that up the very next delivery by finding Suryakumar Yadav’s outside edge by angling it across.
Shedding post-WC expectations the key
“I told him the ball didn’t feel right when it left the hand. The chat was nothing technical, but he told me I was expecting too much from myself, coming off from a high of the World Cup win, and said you can’t maintain that all the time,” Arshdeep explained, pointing out that finding that rhythm for early wickets was as much a mental battle as a technical one. And who would know more about winning World Cups than Ricky Ponting?
Arshdeep would return in the death for his most impressive over – while he has been guilty of hunting for wide-line yorkers too much, he went back to his read and butter and speared several in a row at Sherfane Rutherford’s toes, finally making him his third victim with a searing yorker.
“Even yesterday I came for training and I had a nice spot-bowling session and that was the time when I felt like the ball is coming out really nicely out of my hand,” Arshdeep said of his prep. “And the result was in front of you guys today, the ball was seaming a bit, the ball was swinging, and the control was there.”
With the Indian seamer in this form, Punjab are a difficult prospect to beat – and Arshdeep at his best brings the best of both worlds.