Tanmay reaping the rewards of making mental adjustments

Tanmay Agarwal reflects on his successful Ranji Trophy campaign, scoring runs consistently and aiming for bigger dreams.

Tanmay Agarwal has every reason to look back at the just-concluded Ranji Trophy campaign for Hyderabad with a sense of pride and joy. The 29-year-old southpaw scored 934 runs in 12 innings with four hundreds at an average of 77.83 and this after scoring 765 runs from eight innings in the Plate Group last season which included a record-breaking triple century (366).

“I feel good to be among [the] runs. Always believed in the process rather than thinking about any personal goals. Definitely, making some adjustments to mental aspects, removing the layers of pressure helped me a lot,” the consistent performer said in a chat with The Hindu.

“Definitely, I have been more successful in red-ball cricket. Didn’t get off to a good start but was lucky to make the amends at the right time. Well, perhaps I need to work more on white-ball cricket,” said Tanmay, who has scored 17 centuries in 66 first-class games.

Tanmay, who was one constant factor in the changing face of Hyderabad cricket in the last decade, said he got to know about himself better and felt good to be the second highest scorer in league phase this season (behind Madhya Pradesh’s Shubham Sharma’s tally of 943 runs).

“As they say, I took it match by match. The century (136) against Vidarbha in the last league match in Nagpur and 40 against Rajasthan in Jaipur on a bowler-friendly wicket are the two most satisfying knocks this season,” he said.

“Like any cricketer, I too dream big, like playing for India and in IPL. But again, I believe in destiny and will get whatever is destined. My job is to go out there and perform as consistently as possible. And, I think I am pretty successful in the last two seasons in this regard,” Tanmay said.

“The biggest challenge for us now is the long, long break in domestic cricket,” he added.