Nicholas Pooran's love-hate relationship with IPL finally hits its honeymoon

Imagine you are an innate talent, gifted with immense power-hitting abilities, wicketkeeping reflexes, and people on the streets of Trinidad tout you as the next Chris Gayle. 

You are smooth sailing through life and suddenly enter mid-March. You make the trip to India to play in a freak T20 tournament that garners over 48,000 crore revenue just from media rights and also gives you an opportunity to brush shoulders with the greats of the beautiful game. 

Though pressure and expectations are already knocking on your door, given all that, you’ll probably still take it all seven days of the week. 

Life's good. Brilliant actually.

And then, all of a sudden, you hit a roadblock, things stop going the way you want them to. You start to sow seeds of self-doubt in your head. You start to question your cricketing abilities and wonder how far you can go.

You start to lose a bit of motivation. You feel overwhelmed, burned out, vulnerable, and your focus levels have hit a new low. It’s pitch dark, and you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Well, that’s what the IPL can do to you. That's what sport can do to you. It can make you decelerate. It tests your game, mental and physical toughness. 

And as the clock ticks by, within a split second, you are expected to light up stadiums across the globe.  

Exciting and poetic storylines as IPL entered its business end. It was a pleasant Saturday afternoon in Hyderabad. The stage seemed set. Nicholas Pooran was batting like a dream. Everything's coming off the middle, as sweet as they get, probably like Mother's love. 

Life’s good. Brilliant, yet again. 

But is it always? 

Hope you all like to time travel. It does not cost a single penny and has the ability to induce nostalgia, eventually boosting happiness. Fair deal?

So let's go back to the IPL 2023 auction. Friday, December 23, 2022, Kochi, Kerala. Pooran’s lucky draw saw him go from a base price of 2 Cr to a whopping 16. Gautam Gambhir had a cheeky smile that evening after Pooran's former franchise, Sunrisers Hyderabad, surprisingly didn't even put in a bid.

All the talk in the cricketing world were about the four Ps. Pooran. Price tag. Potential. Performance. 

And rightly, for what he had produced in the IPL previously. His numbers were up and down, a bit of a melange, but more importantly, for those of us who love cricket, Pooran's ability was just not meeting expectations.

The bookies had predicted yet another failure in 2023. With 912 odd runs in four seasons, the bookies were expected to go that route, as money has no room for sentiment. The world had written him off. 

There’s something different about the people from the Caribbean. They just love three things. To party, prove the world wrong and defy the odds. 

Brain Lara, Chris Gayle, Darren Sammy, and a lot more. 

But this was not about them. This was about a little kid from Trinidad who had seen life, endured suffering, put up with whatever came his way, pushed himself to the breaking point and went on to defy the odds. This was about Nicky P, aka Nicholas Latchim Pooran. 

If you are a bowler, pace or spin, you’d be better off in a jacuzzi recovering from your niggle than in the way of Nicholas Pooran.  The man seems different this season. Good different, but different. Pooran’s feeling at home in Lucknow, and rightly so. The Caribbean kid would also agree that he had to repay the faith of the team, management, including Lucknow fans. 

Well, he actually had started to repay it with bits—probably large chunks. There were plenty of jangling roars at a packed M Chinnaswamy in Bengaluru when Pooran launched an onslaught on Royal Challengers Bangalore in their own backyard. 62 from 19. Laser lights and fireworks everywhere, albeit Diwali was a good few months away. Phew. Nicholas Pooran had arrived, and how!

Pooran just knew he wanted to turn this IPL around, and Marcus Stoinis probably wanted to witness it firsthand as Pooran had decided to sneak into people’s stage of dominance and destroy them. 45 from 19. It was Punjab Kings this time in Mohali. 

The party did not end there. Just when the sun started to set in Hyderabad, the temperatures cooled itself to a manageable level, and Pooran walked in.

6*(1) - Full around off, six over mid-wicket.

12*(2) - Bit slower, full, six straight down the ground. 

18*(3) - Full, in the slot, six over mid-wicket. 

Game, set and match? Probably not, but the momentum had shifted. In a blink of an eye from then on, around 7:05 PM local time, LSG had earned two crucial points and moved to fourth place with 13 points in 12 games—Pooran finished unbeaten on 44 from 13, striking at 338.46. 

The journey might have been rough, but sometimes in life, love begins with hate. It was just the case with Pooran’s relationship with the IPL. He might not have had a smooth ride, but excellence isn’t always about natural talent but more about mental perseverance. 

To wait patiently and accept things as they are is a long shot for people who get discouraged in a few days, weeks or months chasing their dreams. Pooran will be celebrated in the years to come and is already an example of how you fight for your dreams, enjoy suffering and succeed in life no matter how long they take to turn into reality.