Good to get back on track, says Shaw

CHENNAI: After enduring a “tough” last few months, West Zone and Mumbai opener Prithvi Shaw is “back on track”.

The 22-year-old did his cause no harm by smashing an aggressive first-innings ton – 113 off 121 deliveries, a knock which was studded with 11 fours and five maximums – in the Duleep Trophy quarter-final contest between West Zone and North East Zone here. Shaw had been down with a bout of typhoid during the Indian Premier League 2022 and was subsequently ignored for national-team (both senior and ‘A’) selection.

“The century is very special for me. After training a lot and giving myself the time to look at what was going wrong, it is good to get back on track,” Shaw said after the end of the second day’s play at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Friday.

“I did not bat a lot in the off-season. I trained with Vivek Ramakrishna (Delhi Capitals strength and conditioning coach) firstly in Delhi and later in Mumbai. About 12 days before the start of the Duleep Trophy, I started batting to get used to the red ball,” added Shaw.

“It was not as if I was going wrong somewhere. I was lost somewhere. I then got to know that I do not belong there and that I belong somewhere else. When one understands such a thing, one gets back on track. When I score runs, it shows that I have done something – it might be the work I have put in during training or anything I have done on the field,” explained Shaw, who has shed a lot of weight.

Shaw said that the illness he suffered during the IPL played an indirect role in his fitness improvement. “Losing weight was not just because of hard training. During the IPL, I had typhoid. I lost about seven or eight kilograms in that period. My weight has remained the same since. It feels nice to be light,” Shaw went on to add.