Andre Russell is drenched in a bucket of sweat. He has the Man of the match award clutched close to his chest and the Purple Cap on his head. “It is the first time that I am wearing this Purple Cap and it feels good on my head. I hope I can keep wearing it with a lot of pride,” he says fresh after yet another match-winning performance for the Kolkata Knight Riders. Russell, for all the batting might that he is known for, this time had won the game with a ball in his hand.

Bowling figures of 4/20 don’t happen every day in T20s, but Russell is more than willing to work his way to getting those figures each time he walks out to bowl. Batting aside, Russell affirms he is a complete all-rounder. “I am a true all-rounder and I aim to bowl at 150kmph and then hit big sixes. I want to hit the ball out of the ground. You do have a lot of all-rounders who bowl at 130kmph and mid 130s and can bat but I want to bowl fast. At the end of the day, a type of all-rounder like me is just trying to raise the bar as high as possible. I have been watching a lot of all-rounders like Jacques Kallis and Shane Watson. The motive is to be as complete as I can.”

Though Russell didn’t have much to do with the bat against the Kings XI Punjab at the Eden Gardens, his services were well required with the ball. He knocked off two within the first three overs of the game tilting the advantage towards the men in purple straightaway, and later came back to pick another two at the death to seal the deal for KKR. This, not before he had his heart racing in the 18th over giving away 13 runs when the Kings XI needed 35 off the last three overs.

Russell runs us through his emotions at that point in time. “I bowled two wrong deliveries which went for two sixes,” he says. “It wasn’t my plan to end my second last over that way. I went to Morne Morkel and told him ‘Listen, give me 12 or 15 runs to work with and let me prove myself tonight’. I was even ready to defend 10 runs because at the end of the day I had cost 12 runs for the team in that over of mine. I am glad I could defend well in the end and I am just happy that we won. But, you need to realise that at the end of the day you never know how things will turn out, you go and bowl and there is a guy waiting to hit you with a bat in his hand. You miss and he hits.”

Talking about hits, those mighty ones that go soaring out of the boundary ropes into the stands and even the mishits that go sailing over the fielder’s heads; where is all the muscle in Russell’s shots coming from? “It has to do with the amount of work that I put in behind the scenes,” he replies. “I am not a big gym fan and a lot of guys in our team never see me at a gym session. But you see, at the end of the day I am hitting the ball far and bowling fast. What I do is I work out in the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping. I get to bed at around 5 or 6 in the morning but that is my routine. I do a lot of abs and push-ups. I do things that will strengthen my back, strengthen areas that I am going to use while playing. Those are the things I do a lot. I may not be that guy who will turn up at a gym but behind that closed door, I am working.”

Along with coming to terms with one’s own body, Russell has tremendous self-confidence in his game. Russell believes no ground is big enough for him to hit sixes. “Some of the biggest grounds are in Australia and I hit sixes like 116 meters. I know that once I get good bat on the ball, no ground is big enough. I just have to believe in myself and back my abilities. Even if one side is bigger than the other in a ground, once you believe that you can clear the big side, you can get it done.

“It is about having an open mind,” he begins to elaborate further about his batting mindset. “I don’t set myself to play one particular shot. I set myself to play any shot and any given delivery. We discuss and we talk as to who we are going to target and who are the bowlers we would look to survive from. If you have a good bowler in the opposition we would look to get six or seven runs from his over but if he bowls a bad ball we capitalise on it. We don’t try to take on bowlers that we are not comfortable hitting against. The other guys, we try to get 15 or 20 runs and make up for that ball that we couldn’t get ourselves to hit.”

Like every batsman, Russell’s brand of batting too has a method. He is not just a marauder of the cricket ball, but a thinking marauder. “Sometimes you just have to go from ball one. At times when I am going to bat and there are two overs to go and we have 170 or 180 on the board it will give me the liberty to go from ball one. But if there are five or six overs to go, I would maybe get a few balls around, run between the wickets up and down, get my body activated so that I can make sure when I am ready to hit, I can go the distance. I do use my brain. I think it through sometimes, but at the same time it is T20 cricket. Even as a bowler if I bowl the best ball, he can hit it for six. If I bowl my worst ball that the batsman should hit for six, he could get out. Sometimes people are talking about smart cricket and whatever but at the end of the day it is about backing yourself.”

Russell is a character of sorts. He removes his cap, gets into the details of his new Mohawk and vows to keep it as a good luck charm for the rest of the tournament. He breaks into a jig on demand and the very next moment snaps out of it and walks back with the trophy in his hand back to the dressing room. That’s Andre Russell for you - an all-rounder in true sense; something that he believes he is not just off the field, but on those 22-yards too for sure.