Jitesh Sharma’s blazing knock hailed as ‘best’ of the season as the stand-in skipper took his team to victory.
Moody, Abhinav marvel at Jitesh Sharma’s blazing knock.
Only No. 23 on the list of the highest individual scores of the 2025 Indian Premier League is Jitesh Sharma’s undefeated 33-ball 85 in Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB) top-two-sealing victory over the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG). On ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out, however, Tom Moody claimed that it was the season’s best inning. Without question.
The odds of the RCB winning their chase of 228 were at 21.09% when Jitesh arrived in the 12th over, just after Virat Kohli’s wicket fell. But with eight balls remaining, he sealed the victory by hitting six sixes and eight fours in Mayank Agarwal’s company.
“The innings is, for me, the innings of the IPL this season by a stretch,” Moody said after the game. “We’ve seen some great knocks from young and old, but this one, wow, quite remarkable!
“The team was totally against it – backs against the wall, Kohli in the sheds, [Phil] Salt in the sheds. There was significant headwind, but he just ignored it all and just took the game apart. He not only took the game apart, he played smartly, just the way he went about it was like he’d been there and done it before many, many times.”
Jitesh’s ability to easily locate pockets of space for his boundaries while navigating the pitch variations used by LSG captain Rishabh Pant was a highlight of his knock. Additionally, he rode his luck by dodging a run-out attempt at the non-strikers’ end, surviving a run-out chance, and receiving a reprieve from a no-ball. While Jitesh did have some luck, Abhinav Mukund stated on Time Out that he also learnt from RCB’s previous match against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), in which they lost by 42 runs after briefly leading the chase.
“And that’s a great sign of any IPL cricketer, right?,” Abhinav said. “They were 172 for 3 in the last game, chasing 232, they got 189 all out. I know the wickets fell before him, but the pressure increased in the last game right after the timeout. I feared the same when he got out of that no-ball, but luck is a beautiful thing there. You get a reprieve and then you say, ‘okay, this time I’m not making a mistake again.’
“That’s exactly what happened. I’m very, very happy for Jitesh, but this is exactly what you’re paying the big bucks for as a mid-order batter. And he’s proven that a plenty. On a night when your top wicketkeeper or your World Cup wicketkeeper [Pant] gets a hundred and everyone’s happy, this guy’s got one better, I would think, with 85* off 33.”