Weeks before KL Rahul and Ben Stokes face off in the Tendulkar-Anderson Trophy, the two batting talents went head to head in a spot of Extreme Cricket.
The India-England was still a month away, when Rahul and Stokes undertook a Red Bull Extreme cricket challenge that included range-hitting from a moving truck and precision striking on targets batting on a floating barge on a Mumbai lake.
The defensive abilities of both the key members of their respective sides were also tested against bowling machines, which they both named Bumrah for the variety in exploring onto the stumps. Moving targets suspended from drones and mounted on auto rickshaws (tum tuk for Stokes), completed the extreme batting challenge.
The first challenge saw Rahul batting on a glacially moving open trailer to complete an aggregate 500 metres in a limited number of chances on an empty road stretch. His maximum travelled 110 metre. Stokes’s equivalent was batting from a floating barge with 6 buoys rings signalling target zones to land ball into. He managed a few as Naser Hussain provided animated commentary.
The second challenge had 4 temporary rooms constructed with balls spitting out bowling machines. Rahul’s challenge was to guess ‘where’ from of the 4 slots the ball would emerge from, while Stokes’ needed to wait and bide his time for a ‘when’, as the delivery suddenly fetched up.
In Room 3, Rahul was up against a pitch made of different zones – Wood plank (dead bounce), dust Bowl (slow and low), chaos mat (entirely unpredictable) and marble slab (fast kick bounce). The goal was to not get Out. While Stokes’ had to bat with operatic shrieking music blared into his ear.
On the final challenge, the two took turns on an open field hitting long aiming at auto rickshaw mounted bullseye targets.
Story continues below this ad
One tuk tuk driver had his glass broken by Stokes and wasn’t particularly happy.
A while later, a drone carried a giant target hovering over the field and moving about.
The India-England Test with Stokes as captain and KL Rahul as batting lynchpin starts on Friday at Headingley Leeds.
