A commendable season with the bat in his maiden IPL tenure, Devdutt Padikkal was always going to the first-choice opener for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the years to come. Scoring more than 400 runs in the 2020 edition, Padikkal was a certainty coming into the 14th edition but destiny had other plans for him. Tested positive for covid-19 right ahead of the tournament, Padikkal was forced to sit out for the opener against the Mumbai Indians.
However, he didn’t have to miss more matches after recovering in time and was part of the XI in the matches against the Sunrisers Hyderabad and the Kolkata Knight Riders. Despite not scoring much in both the games, he spent some quality time in the middle which actually helped him quite a bit during his stupendous century against the Rajasthan Royals.
Padikkal stormed back to form with a sensational century against the Royals. The southpaw smashed his way to his maiden IPL century in just 51 deliveries and shared an unbeaten 180 runs stand with his skipper Virat Kohli to help RCB chase the target down with 10 wickets in hand.
"To be honest it's been special, all I could do was wait my turn. When I had Covid, it was all I was thinking about, to come here and play, and when I missed the first one it really hurt me. The wicket was coming on really well, and when we get into a partnership like that it gets easier," Padikkal, who was the unanimous Player of the Match stated during the post-match presentation ceremony.
He also said that scoring the century was not what he was looking at. Even if he had not got to the century it wouldn’t have mattered as far as his team is winning.
"No real tension when the hundred came, I told Virat to go for it. At the end of the day even if I didn't get a hundred it wouldn't have mattered to me if the team won. The conversation was very clear, we both realised when we were going good. There were times when he was going better, times when I was going better. We just wanted to rotate the strike," he added.