Jarrod Kimber, CS Chiwanza
The delivery was short and flying towards Andre Russell’s helmet like a heat-seeking missile. It had the makings of what cricketers of his generation called a perfume ball in the West Indies. The only problem was that it wasn’t quick enough. It was a slower ball bouncer. Russell swung his bat, didn’t middle it, but made enough contact to send the ball soaring over fine leg for a six.
With that six, Russell brought up his 11th IPL half-century. That knock, in Kolkata Knight Riders’ opening game against Sunrisers Hyderabad on March 23, was the beginning of a trail of destruction Russell was to subject opposition teams to in IPL 2024. This year, he has 222 runs from 120 balls faced for an average of 31.71 at a strike rate of 185. Those figures are even more impressive if you distill them into true values. His average and strike rate are 8.09 and 23.12 points higher than expected.
Just over 43% of those runs have come at the death. His strike rate of 208.7 in that phase of the game is the seventh highest when compared against batters with 90 or more runs between the 17th and 20th overs. Russell has the third-highest individual score in an innings in that period, behind Heinrich Klaasen and Naman Dhir.
Dre Russ, to call him by his chosen moniker, is a finisher par excellence. He has the ninth most runs at the death in the IPL since 2007. His average of 23.67 places him in the top 10. His strike rate of 203.63 is the second highest after AB de Villiers’ 232.57. He has the joint-most fifties at the death in that period, two, as many as Virat Kohli. And though he has struck the fourth-most sixes, he strikes them at a rate of one in every 5.6 balls he faces. That frequency is only second to de Villiers’ 5.4.
The unbeaten half-century he scored against SRH in their first meeting did not just untangle KKR from a losing position to lift them to victory, it was also a statement of intent from the West Indian. He was rolling back the years to the pre-2019 version of himself.
In 2019, Russell was aged 31 and his knees were buckling under him. They did not look like they had any synovial fluid left in them. His run-up was reduced to a hobble-up, and his follow-through often included a limp. In the field, Russell did his best to be stationary. In 2021 he suffered an injury that forced him to reduce his workload. Which meant that he could no longer be relied upon to deliver two or more overs in a match. Last year, he left the field after sending down the first delivery of his third over and did not return to the field. That season, he sent down an average of 1.1 overs a match.
The 2024, 36-year-old version of Dre Russ is different gravy. His body doesn’t look as fragile as it did in the past five years. He has barely left the field due to injury. The reason? He is leaner and lighter. Russell did not alter his gym regimen, he prefers to work out between 4:30 and 5 am. As always, his training sessions take between 30 and 45 minutes. The major change has been in his diet. Russell has been a little more aware of what he eats.
The dietary change helped him trim his body and look less like the big man he was in 2018 but resembles the mid-20s version of himself. That said, he is still an imposing figure at the crease and still launches bowlers out of the park. The leaner and lighter version is also sharper, thanks to a slight technical change he made coming into the 2024 IPL season.
While training at the 2023 edition of the Abu Dhabi T10, his friend, training partner and KKR teammate, Sunil Narine made an observation about his stride. That prompted Russell to make a change, and shorten his step like most big hitters on the franchise circuit. The alteration is working wonders for him because it allows him an extra split second to play the ball.
His new regime is also turning back the clock to the pre-2021 version of himself in the field. This season, he is throwing himself around as if he was in his mid-20s.
When KKR played against SRH in Qualifier 1 on May 21, he launched himself to pluck a screamer destined for the boundary, sending Abhishek Sharma back in the second over. In the 14th over, when it looked like SRH were batting themselves back into the match, Russell made a dive to his left to stop a certain four runs, and in a single motion, threw the ball straight to Rahmanullah Gurbaz to execute a run-out that swung the pendulum in KKR’s favour even more decisively. In the past, he would have made a half-hearted attempt and watched the ball race for four.
With the ball, Russell has been sending down deliveries consistently as the fifth bowler, averaging just above two overs a match. This is a lot in a season where teams are fielding five specialists, thanks to the Impact Sub. He has bagged 16 wickets in 26.5 overs. According to Cricinfo’s Smart Stats, which measure the value of wickets, his dismissals are worth 20.7 wickets.
As if to underscore the point of the value of his dismissals, KKR has not lost a match where he has taken a wicket. If we turn to our algorithm for true stats, it tells us that Russell has taken 7.15 more wickets than expected.
At 36, Russell’s bowling is less lightning and more a variety of well-disguised slower balls, but it still has the same impact it did six years ago. His hitting is still incredibly frenetic, and his fielding remains breathtaking. In 2018, this was a player who could win a game with any of his three skills. He is still doing that in 2024.
