Jake Fraser-McGurk lights up IPL with dazzling debut half-century | IPL

With five booming sixes and an all-or-nothing audacity, Australian cricket shooting star Jake Fraser-McGurk has declared himself the Indian Premier League’s latest big man.

Fraser McGuirk has been sitting on the Derry Capitals bench, patiently waiting for his day in the spotlight. And when that moment came on Friday, he grabbed it greedily, scoring a stunning win in his debut for a franchise that was struggling after a half-century. This lifts them off the legs of the IPL table.

Hoping to change the fortunes of his struggling club, coach Ricky Ponting decided to give the Box Hill man, who turned 22 on Thursday, a belated birthday present – and it was a former Test. The Supergiants were influenced by his colleague Justin Langer, who is currently the manager of Lucknow.

The Victorians, who chased down the Supergiants for 167-7 in Lucknow, were quickly thrown into the match at first drop after veteran compatriot David Warner was bowled by Yash Thakur for just eight in the fourth over. Ta.

But just like on his List A and first-class debut, where he also scored a half-century, Fraser-McGurk looked completely unfazed at the IPL bow, sending the second ball facing Yash over deep midwicket to the crowd. I slammed it. Fraser McGuirk then hit Arshad Khan with an even bigger maximum of over 96m in the similar vicinity, and the spinners started to quiet Arshad Khan a bit, with captain Rishabh Pant taking over the chasing responsibilities. .

But he couldn’t help but admire the six-or-out approach of Fraser McGuirk, who wears number 33. Fraser McGuirk, wearing No. 33, did his next trick, giving a demonic time to a clearly frustrated Krunal Pandya with a six, six, six off. Continuous balls. This prevented Pandya from hitting a wide bouncer at 115km/h and he was clearly excited that he might go for 66 in the over.

In the end, Fraser-McGurk, who reached 50 off 31, tried to be too extravagant, slicing Naveen Ul-Haq to Arshad Khan at deep point, but the match was as good as already won. It was an exhilarating feeling for the youngster, who had watched his team sprint towards the target and finish with 170-4, a six-wicket win with 11 balls remaining.

“I’m very happy to be here,” said a beaming Fraser-McGurk after completing 55 off 35 balls (two fours and five sixes). “It’s just a different world of cricket here. I’ve never seen anything like it, never heard of anything like it, but it’s just amazing.”

“I’ve spent the last five or six games just watching on the sideline and just itching to get out there. So just to go out there and play my first game, I’m really excited. Swinging too hard. I tried to stay in shape and find the middle of the bat. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 12 months, so why change that?”

Pant, who scored 41 runs as Delhi rose from the bottom of the table to ninth, smiled that they had “probably” found the right number three for them after their early season failures.

Lucknow captain KL Rahul was also impressed. “McGuirk was very unknown. We watched a lot of videos of him and he was hitting the ball really well, credit to him, he changed the game,” he said. Said.

Lucknow’s Marcus Stoinis did not have his best days and although he scored eight runs, Ayush Badni’s unbeaten 55 off 35 balls proved to be the highlight of their batting, while one over. He hit 10 points.