Riyan Parag has hit a purple patch in this edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) slamming back-to-back half centuries to repay the faith of the Rajasthan Royals team management that has backed him over the years despite below-par performances and facing the wrath of the team’s fans.

The 22-year-old Assam lad has successfully translated his red-hot form in domestic cricket into the IPL, scoring two match-winning fifties to help the Royals maintain their unbeaten run in the tournament so far, with the latest coming against Mumbai Indians on Monday.

Rajasthan Royals assistant coach Shane Bond has described the youngster as a player of “extreme talent” and went on to compare Riyan with a young Suryakumar Yadav.

“He sort of reminds me a little bit of Surya (Suryakumar), who came to Mumbai a few years ago. He looks like that – he has got extreme talent. He has just matured as a cricketer, even though he is only 22,” said Bond.

Bond, who also doubles up as RR’s bowling coach, shifted base earlier this year after ending a nine-year stint with the MI franchise. The New Zealander explained the ‘cricketing decision’ that RR director of cricket Kumar Sangakkara had spoken about on the elevation of Parag to the No.4 spot in the batting order.

“He has had an outstanding domestic season, obviously, batting up the order. The trade we made with Devdutt (Padikkal), bringing Avesh (Khan) in, was to put Riyan up into a position which was probably better suited,” Bond explained.

Riyan’s superb outings in the first couple of matches in Royals’ colours, is an after-effect of his prolific run with the bat across formats in the domestic season. In the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament, he finished as the leading run-getter with 510 runs at a strike rate of 182.79 and also picked 11 wickets. In the Deodhar Trophy, representing East Zone, he notched up 354 runs in five matches, the most in the tournament besides taking 11 scalps. He translated the form to red-ball cricket, amassing 378 runs (inclusive of two centuries) at an average of 75.60 in four outings during the Ranji Trophy.

The one uniformity was that he batted at No.4 for Assam across all formats.

Coming into Monday’s game against MI on the back of a 29-ball 43 and an unbeaten 45-ball 84, Riyan, with Royals in just a bit of trouble at 42 for 2 chasing 126, held his nerves and took them over the line with an unbeaten 39-ball 54.

“When I play domestically, this is the exact type of situation I go in to bat. When Jos (Buttler) got out and Ash (R Ashwin) bhai got out a little after, I was like ‘this is what I do, this is what I’ve been doing for the last six months playing domestic cricket’. So it was pretty simple to calculate everything,” Riyan told the host broadcaster after the game.

All these years, the Royals primarily used Riyan as a finisher, which didn’t yield any results.

“I have had three to four years of not performing at all. And you really go back to your hotel room and you think… that when you know you can do something and the performances are not coming, you get back to the drawing (board). I tried finding what was wrong, and I figured out that I was not practicing at this level enough,” Parag said.

“So I went back after the (last) season and practised very hard, and I think that’s showing now. I’ve practiced (against) these types of quick balls and these kinds of scenarios a lot, hence the performances,” he added.

Unfair to judge on past failures

Bond said it was unfair to judge Parag on his past failures as he was entrusted with the finishing task at a very young age, compared to the No.4 position, where he is expected to build the innings and later go after the bowlers.

“Riyan started so young, you forget that he was 17 or something, playing in one of the toughest spots in a batting line-up: No. 6. You look at the characters who finish games around the IPL, they are generally pretty experienced guys. The Tim Davids, the David Millers… these are high-quality players who play international cricket. Riyan had been tasked with that for a number of years. He is still a very young man, but he has got this wealth of experience behind him now,” the former Kiwi pacer said.

“We are getting the best of him. The investment that RR have made of him, it’s starting to reap the rewards. It is pretty exciting what he could offer for the rest of the season for us,” he added.