Smaran is going through a purple patch.
| Photo Credit: K. BHAGYA PRAKASH

Former Dutch footballer and Manchester United striker Ruud van Nistelrooy is supposed to have once told Argentine forward Gonzalo Higuain that goals were like ketchup. “You try, but it doesn’t come out. When it comes, it does all at once.”

R. Smaran appears to be experiencing that in cricket. In his first five First Class matches for Karnataka, he scored 145 runs in all. But in the recent victorious Vijay Hazare Trophy campaign, he totalled 433 runs from 10 matches at an average of 72.16.

In fact, in his last three outings, he has scored 76, 101 and 203, against Haryana, Vidarbha (both Vijay Hazare Trophy) and Punjab (Ranji Trophy) respectively.

“It was never in my mind to get a double hundred,” Smaran said on Friday after his effort against Punjab. “I just looked to play ball by ball. In the Ranji Trophy, I didn’t initially get runs. My focus was to take my time and settle in. And I’m glad I got it.”

Karnataka’s progress in the Ranji Trophy will depend not just on its own results but also those elsewhere in Elite Group-C. But what the Hazare Trophy triumph has done is to have helped the likes of Smaran play with a free mind, sans the fear of failure.

“The win was very, very important for us and we’ve been really gelling well as a team,” he said. “It made a drastic difference to my batting in terms of the mindset.”

“We have to win both [Ranji Trophy] games [against Punjab and Haryana] to stand a chance. We’ll just play some good cricket. The rest is not in our hands.”