New Delhi, March 29 -- In an age where talented young cricketers are monitored at every step, trained to deliver drab cliches in media interactions and instructed to sanitise their social media accounts, Riyan Parag speaks his mind, hits back at online trolls and celebrates as he wishes to. You can perhaps be excused for doing the latter when you have the currency of runs and wickets, but Parag's innate confidence seemed to border on arrogance and even delusion because he hadn't backed it up with numbers.

To be sure, the middle-order batter's record in the IPL hadn't merited much leeway. In 54 matches across five seasons till 2023, he had tallied 600 runs at an average of 16.21 and a strike rate of 123.96 with two fifties. And yet, Parag...