Lockie Ferguson: From acclimatisation issues to Super Over heroics

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) fast bowler Lockie Ferguson's superb performance in Super Over decider not only ensured a win for SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Sunday, but it ended his jinx in the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Ferguson bowled 27 deliveries -- almost one-fourth of them were timed over 150kph -- a few leg-cutters, and his speciality -- the yorkers -- and picked up three wickets in the regulation period and two more in the Super Over to help KKR take two points.

In 2017, after arriving for his first IPL at Rising Pune Supergiant, the right-arm pacer got bedridden for two weeks due to fever and lost six kilograms. Then he played a game in severe heat and was laid low for a further week due to another bug.

Ferguson's next IPL stint, last year, was poor. In five games he could pick just two wickets.

However, at 2019 World Cup, he emerged as the second highest wicket-taker which catapulted him into the league of big guns.

"Leading to the World Cup, I came off a poor IPL, got dropped a few times, and mentally suffered a lot because the expectations for the IPL was a lot. But then I came back to the Black Caps family, got the confidence in a set-up where I knew my role, my place," he said on a Youtube show a few months ago.

On Sunday, when he got David Warner out in the Super Over, he had replicated the delivery on his international debut, an ODI in December 2016.

Only that Warner missed it while he tried to guide the away-going one behind stumps again as against the one in that 2016 ODI which he chopped on to his stumps.

"I think getting David Warner out especially at the start of the super over," said Ferguson when asked about his favourite wicket after Sunday's match. "I had my plan which was working throughout the game."

Ferguson got his NZ skipper Kane Williamson with a short delivery that the batsman guided to third man, removed Priyam Garg with a slow leg-cutter, bowled Manish Pandey with a sizzling 148 kmph, base-of-the-stump yorker. He then got Warner and Abdus Samad, the latter with a slow leg-cutter, in the Super Over.

"I have been training a lot hard, feeling pretty comfortable, haven't played in a while so I was pretty nervous," the right-arm pace bowler said in a video on IPLT20.com while talking to teammate Shubman Gill.

"I try to keep it simple with what I was doing throughout the game. I backed my yorker and backed my slower ball, fortunately got my wickets, which is always nice," he added.

"Stuck to my plans, which was not different from the plan of the other games. Always nice to get a wicket off the first ball. Relieves a little bit of stress," the Kiwi player said of the Super Over.

Ferguson, like others, is coming without any competitive cricket due to Covid-induced lockdown, his last match coming on March 13 when New Zealand lost to Australia in Sydney.

According to a report in Stuff.co.nz, Ferguson had to confine himself to a hotel room in Abu Dhabi for about a week ahead of IPL with just a skipping rope to train with.

Skipping, sets of 100 squats, burpees, and push-ups comprised the training regimen devised by New Zealand's strength and conditioning coach Chris Donaldson.