Ravindra, and an unlikely Wellington reunion in Chennai

Chepauk has a Westpac Stadium vibe to it. Yellow stands. Yellow jerseys. World-class Wellington batters.

In IPL 2023, a Wellington boy thrilled the Chepauk crowd. In a bizarre three-day rain-hit final that season, Devon Conway produced a Player-of-the-Match performance, against Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad. On Tuesday, Chennai Super Kings will face Titans in a rematch of the final, at Chepauk, but Conway is back in Wellington, recovering from thumb surgery. He has been sidelined until May.

No Conway? No problem for CSK. Because another Wellington boy has slotted directly into the top order and enjoyed a sparkling debut, against Royal Challengers Bangalore. Thirty-seven runs off 15 balls at an eye-watering strike-rate of 246.66. It's his highest in 57 T20s. It's also the highest strike rate by a debutant across 17 seasons of the IPL (for a minimum of 30 runs scored).

When Rachin Ravindra was snapped up by CSK at the auction last December for INR 1.8 crore, he wasn't a certainty in their XI though he was the breakout star of the ODI World Cup held in India that year. But when he was thrown into Chepauk, which was a pulsing bowl of noise on Friday, Ravindra was at home away from home.

IPL debuts can often be unnerving - some of the biggest international names have had harsh initiations into the IPL - but Ravindra's was nerveless. After taking the catches of both Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli in the hotspots at the boundary, he tore up the powerplay with the bat, in CSK's chase of 174. With his hairstyle and athleticism, you could easily mistake him for another Ravindra from CSK - Jadeja.

Ravindra's former Wellington and New Zealand A coach, Sriram Krishnamurthy, was part of a packed crowd at Chepauk. Sriram, who now works at the Super Kings Academy, CSK's grassroots programme, isn't a Chepauk regular for the CSK games, but on Friday he was right there for Ravindra's IPL debut.

"It was surreal for sure," Sriram tells ESPNcricinfo. "We started working together in Wellington in 2015 and we set small goals. But our reunion at Chepauk was simply surreal because it was never ever part of the plan. Even until last year we would have never entertained the thought of meeting in Chennai."

In the lead-up to Ravindra's first IPL stint, many on the outside wondered whether he had the game and gears to succeed in T20 cricket. After all, he came into the IPL with a modest T20 record: 673 runs in 48 innings at an average of 16.41 and strike rate of 126.26. On the opening night of IPL 2024, he struck at nearly 250. Sriram isn't surprised one bit, though.

"He's always had the skill and the shots," Sriram says. "What is aiding him to bring runs to his name is his mental switch. Right from when he was 14-15, he could cut, pull, drive, sweep, he could play the lofted drive. When you're playing on some flat wickets, even against good bowlers the margin for error is so small; so he's able to play all these shots. Which is what he was able do against Australia at the Westpac Stadium and then against RCB at Chepauk, which wasn't the usual Chennai wicket.

"I feel it's a mental switch: he understands that in a T20 game if he can think about the batting in a way that he can play all the shots, based on his reaction to the ball…Whereas when he goes back to New Zealand, where he's going to play at least 50% of cricket, he needs to be more careful. In the 50-over games against Bangladesh at home during the day games, the ball was seaming and holding in the pitch, he needs to be more selective with his shots there."

In the IPL season-opener, Ravindra hooked Alzarri Joseph for six, whipped Mohammed Siraj for four, but it was his rasping back-foot pull off a not-so-short ball from Karn Sharma that stood out. Ravindra picked the length early and made a blameless hard-length delivery look like a rank long-hop.

"He always looks good when he plays the square-drive between cover and point, but that didn't come for him in that opening game," Sriram says. "We will see more of that as the tournament goes on. When you're quick on our feet and use the depth of the crease…that's the difference between punching it back to the bowler or hitting it to the boundary. He was able to cash in, but you still need to put them [bad balls] away."

Ravindra has had a habit of making striking first impressions. In his first game for Wellington Under-19s, Ravindra, 15 at the time, scored a century. On the opening day of the 2023 ODI World Cup, he cracked an unbeaten 123 off 96 balls against England in Ahmedabad.Then came the first-day first act at Chepauk.

"Making that first impact is a quality of good players-in-the-making," Sriram says. "Let's go back to 2021, when he made his Test debut for Black Caps in Kanpur, he helped save that game. Then in the World Cup first match against England, in a different role. There was a Test comeback against South Africa. Now this CSK debut. He has always taken his opportunities and that's something that resonated when I first met him. That also tells you about the person he is."

The day after Ravindra's IPL debut, Sriram got together with him once again, at the Super Kings academy, and introduced him to the kids there. "We have met almost every alternate day in Chennai since the first two games are in Chennai," Sriram says. "It meant so much to the kids. For him to walk into the indoor facility and see the kids get as excited as they did... that selfie picture. We had a tough time to control those boys from jumping around him and falling on him (laughs)."

When Anirudh Immanuel, a messy-haired mystery spinner from the USA who is with CSK as a net bowler, walked out to train on the eve of the IPL opener, he was mistaken for Ravindra. One game in, Ravindra is a more recognisable face and could well become the "flavour of the season" in Chennai.