Travis Head watches Abhishek Sharma perform a few stretches, only to crack a joke about it to Marco Jansen in the dugout as he waits for the umpires to walk out to the middle. He's ready to pounce, dressed in the full-sleeved Sunrisers shirt and his generous Gray-Nicolls to weave magic. (SRH Vs LSG, As It Happened | Full IPL Coverage)
The officials walk out, and after a bit of glove love, Head slowly strides closer to the wicket with a single purpose in mind: to take on the opposition.
There's intensity in the eyes, with zen mode focus. The South Australian playing for a South Indian franchise has potency written over every inch of his body. He wants it and he wants it bad. The runs, the two points, the play-off qualification and also to breach the 300-run mark in the IPL.
Head, Sunrisers' new madman slaps one over covers, slices one behind point, slams another over wide long-off. The shot making, exquisite. The timing, even better. What he's about to achieve is something the game has rarely seen. Batting so absurd after each passing over with runs flowing and records tumbling.
Whether Travis Head scores 102 from just 41 against Bengaluru at the M Chinnaswamy or gets out for just one against the same opposition in Hyderabad, it's the same mindset - on-field ferociousness and off-field humility that shapes his human existence for relentless pursuit of excellence.
Head’s previous IPL numbers did not make for pretty reading. The 2016 and 2017 seasons were more like you go out, look at the clouds, and you knew, it was going to be a strange day. Well, for his talent, the numbers were strange too. The left-handed batter scored 205 runs in ten IPL appearances.
Little did the cricketing fraternity know back in 2017 that Head would go on to win the Player of the Match awards in the World Test Championship final and ODI World Cup final at a packed Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, and also bag an INR 6.8 crore IPL contract in under seven months.
Head's dedication to bettering his craft in all formats has taught him to be open to change and has enabled him to pull off world-class problem solving, and the sound of his shots reverberated through stadiums across India and has settled down in every ear.
This was supposed to be the year that the drums stopped beating and the trumpets stopped blowing for Head as the law of averages after all is every success's best friend.
And yet, there he was, breaking records, soaking every minute of the glory he thought would never come.
