Talented Atharva Taide, who is a key player of the Vidarbha team in domestic cricket has a great camaraderie with Jitesh Sharma and they are now a part of the Punjab Kings (PBKS) dressing room for the past two IPL seasons as well. However, Taide spoke about how Jitesh shared his experiences about sharing the dressing room with veterans like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav.
Speaking exclusively to Sportskeeda, Atharva Taide said: “Me and Jitesh spend a lot of time together. He is not just a Punjab Kings player, part of Indian team as well and shares the dressing room with some of the best players in the world like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav. He learns a lot from them and shares his experience with me. Our dreams are aligned; playing for India.”
However, Atharva Taide hit 186 runs in the IPL 2023 season in the seven games he played at a fine strike rate of 144.19 with a couple of fifties to his name as well. Punjab Kings also started the IPL 2024 season with the opening combination of Shikhar Dhawan and Jonny
Bairstow and that means Atharva Taide has to wait for his opportunity to be in the playing XI as well.
“Throughout any cricketer’s career, there will be phases when they will have to be ready to get called up for an opportunity at any point in time. My focus at the moment is just working hard off the field, forcing on my skills, talking to the coaches on improvements I can work for till I get a match. The more I keep fine-tuning and not focus on selection, the better it is for me. In the game then I jus have to express myself as I have worked on my skills off the field,” he shared.
Meanwhile, Atharva Taide opened up on how he had scored 29 runs off 17 balls, including three boundaries, and the six which was a superb upper-cut off Jofra Archer.
He said, “I hit a six off Jofra Archer at Wankhede last season. Before the game, I had researched a lot and studied the bowler and then I anticipated when I was going to get a bouncer. When I hit six with an uppercut, I felt that I belonged to this level and got a belief that my mindset and my skills are sustainable at this level. Hitting Jofra was a game-changing moment for me.”
“I would say I could have done better last season. While I didn’t have a great start, I did manage to score a couple of half-centuries. I felt I could do well because of the great team environment that we had. My management and my captain backed me a lot and that gave me confidence that I can not just perform at that level but also win games for my team,” he again shared.
“I think the new stadium is a big boon for us. We feel like it’s a fortress for us, as it is built according to the strength of our team. I feel it has a better vibe than our earlier stadium. More people can come to support us now with the increased capacity and it makes a massive difference in crunch moments. We take a lot of pride in having passionate fans who keep turning up in support year after year. Although we haven’t given the results as they would have liked, we would try to bring home a trophy for them soon,” Atharva Taide concluded.
