At one stage during the Indian Premier League game between Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Titans at the Wankhede Stadium, Suryakumar Yadav was on 35 off 22 deliveries. There were six overs left to be bowled at the time. In that passage of play, Suryakumar supercharged his batting engine and ended up with a 49-ball unbeaten 103 – his first IPL hundred. For a moment, it felt as if he was driving through the Mumbai traffic at 60 km/h, before switching gears and racing past all obstacles at a breakneck speed of 140 km/h.
It was another of Suryakumar’s quintessential T20 knocks, where his rubber wrists left everyone in a state of amazement. A case in point would be the six he smacked off Mohammed Shami off the second ball of the 19th over. Initially, Suryakumar looked set to loft Shami down the ground off the back foot. But, at the last moment, with a flick of the wrist, he sliced it over the third-man fence. Even Sachin Tendulkar, the ultimate batting legend, seemed to be stunned by the shot as he tried to decipher it in the dug-out. In the final over, he then nonchalantly swept one of the fastest bowlers in the IPL, Alzarri Joseph.
After the game, Suryakumar shared his thoughts with the official broadcaster, on how he had assessed the dimensions of the ground and the conditions. “I knew that one side of the boundary is 75-80 metres,” he said. “So I was prepared to hit two shots in that over (19th over) – scooping one over third man and flicking one over square leg. I was not thinking about hitting straight. I have played that shot before, and I just backed myself and was really happy with how it went over third man.”
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Mohit Sharma was another of the bowlers against whom Suryakumar put on a geometry lesson. In the 16th over, Mohit had outmanoeuvred his opponent by employing variations and bowling in the channel outside the off stump. By the next over that Mohit bowled, Suryakumar had worked out his gameplan: with a trigger, he walked across the stumps to play sweeps and cuts that fetched him three fours and a six.
Even in what was expected to be a gladiatorial contest between Suryakumar and Rashid Khan, he had the upper hand: the sweep shot was used to good effect. When a batter scores around 50 per cent of his runs on both sides of the wicket, all that the opposition players can perhaps do is put their hands up and say: you were the master on that particular day.
Akash Madhwal, the Mumbai pace bowler, can be added to the growing list of admirers of Surykumar’s mind-bending skills. In the post-match press conference, he noted: “Bowling to him is very difficult. I have bowled to pretty good batters, but Suryakumar Yadav happens to be someone extraordinary. The shots he practices in the nets come off as it is when he plays them on the field. So it is very difficult to bowl to him.
“Even in the practice matches, he pulls off these kinds of shots out of nowhere. The best thing about these shots as a bowler during practice matches is that they seem gorgeous. Haven’t seen anyone bat like him yet.”
Curiously, at the start of the IPL season, there were question marks over Suryakumar’s form, albeit in different formats. Incidentally, he started the IPL on a rather ordinary note in the first three matches, before returning to some kind of form with an unbeaten 43 against Kolkata Knight Riders. He hasn’t looked back since.
As with Rajinikanth’s movies, watching Suryakumar wield the willow in T20 cricket often requires a willing suspension of disbelief, even for a batting maestro like Tendulkar.