Former England skipper Michael Vaughan has heaped praises on Shardul Thakur and compared him with the legendary all-rounder Sir Ian Botham. Vaughan believes Shardul has the ability, just like Ravichandran Ashwin, to deceive batters and he can change the course of any game.
Shardul Thakur is going through an excellent form in international cricket as well as in domestic cricket. He has a breakthrough year in 2021, starting from the Gabba Test where he scored a match-defining fifty. He, then, broke the record of Ian Botham by scoring the fastest Test fifty on the English soil.
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“I was not aware of it (breaking Ian Botham’s record). But it’s always good to score important runs for the team. Yes, these guys are teasing me with his name. But I think it’s good to be compared with the greats of the game,” said Shardul after his record-breaking fifty.
Michael Vaughan expressed his admiration for the Indian all-rounder by comparing him with Ian Botham.
“Last week I was with Lord Botham and he is a true lord. Thakur is very similar to Ian Botham. He gets the ball in his hands and makes things happen. He did it in the Test series, he did it in the IPL. The mentor of the Indian T20 team is behind the stumps. He was captaining him. He was probably on the phone with Virat and Ravi talking about him, saying ‘come on’. He (Shardul) has that ability to make things happen,” Vaughan said on Cricbuzz.
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He, further, mentioned how Shardul poses the ability to deceive batters just like Ravichandran Ashwin with his pace variations.
“He must have a very good deception of pace because you watch him and it’s like ‘yeah, it’s pretty normal. But he has that deception like Ashwin. He bowls and it goes through quickly, bowls cross-seam and goes through quickly. He has that ability to surprise the batter and those subtle variations that we can’t pick up,” added Vaughan.
Shardul Thakur was initially named in the reserves for the T20 World Cup 2021 but BCCI included him when they submitted the final squad. Axar Patel replaced him from the main squad to the reserves.
