Shepherd, the most dangerous class of T20 finisher

Romario Shepherd said the f-word that was heard around the world.

Cricketers these days - along with the hours they spend practicing their chosen craft - also go through rigorous media training. So when we see them on TV, they are still in performance mode. The mic subs in for bat and ball.

Out in the field is one of the places where they can be real. Because they really don't have the energy to be fake. Between trying to do well for themselves, for their team, for their loved ones, for their countries, they are left in a state so raw.

The stump mic caught Shepherd in exactly that state because something happened that wasn't part of the plan. He swung. And he missed.

"I was just thinking ball by ball. And trying to hit each ball for six or four," Shepherd said after recording the joint-second-fastest half-century in the IPL. "That was the idea."

He's had 118 chances to shape a T20 match. Ninety-four of those have come with so little time that he was lucky to get 15 balls. This is his life. He wakes up. He brushes his teeth. He clocks into work. And then just gets a lot of practice grinding his teeth.

"Well, it was difficult, you know, sitting there, you know, watching players win," Shepherd said.

All that pent-up energy has to go somewhere, though. On Saturday, he faced just 14 deliveries and hit ten of them to the boundary. In the last IPL, he faced ten deliveries and hit seven of them to the boundary. Earlier this year, in the ILT20, he was out there for marginally more - 13 deliveries - and seven of them were sent packing. He specialises in these all-too-brief innings (15 balls or fewer). He has a strike rate of 200-plus in 20 of them.

Shepherd is the most dangerous kind of finisher. There are others who have a better rate of success, whose methods translate over a variety of conditions and oppositions, but few get on a roll like he does.

Khaleel Ahmed made the mistake of starting the 19th over with two balls right in Shepherd's arc. The first was short but not enough. The second was full but not enough. "When I hit the first two [sixes], I knew I had the bowler under pressure," Shepherd said. "I saw his body language, so I was like, okay, let me try and put you under some more pressure and continue going, continue going."

Khaleel did the right thing thereafter and took pace off - twice - but the first one took an outside edge and went over short third and the next one, which was a bouncer too, so it had two layers of security to overcome, still went for six. Shepherd, in an extraordinary display of power, carved it over cover. He wasn't worried about thinking ahead or manipulating the field or pre-empting the bowler or even scoring runs. He was there simply putting bat on ball. Someone who plays just like him made him focus on that because that tends to be enough when you look like you could bench press Sam Curran.

"When I walked to the crease, I had an idea of what they were trying to bowl, so I got there prepared for that," Shepherd said. "And then Timmy [David] told me just to hold my shape a bit because it was gripping in the wicket. So my mindset automatically changed to just base up and, you know, watch the ball as it comes and try and hit in my areas and don't try and swing before, swing too early."

No one in the 18-year history of the IPL has ever made a fifty coming in as late as Shepherd did against Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Seventeen-point-four overs had already gone. We could rack our brains to try and find the words to make sense of all of this this but Shepherd has already provided the perfect one. It was heard around the world.