Bharath Ramaraj in Dubai
Why do athletes practice for hours together? The answer could be this. In the sporting arena, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz might go toe to toe for four or five hours with jaw-dropping rallies and breathtaking angles. But behind the scenes, in the training workshops, a champion is built on the foundation of mistakes. That is the arena where an athlete has to feel the pain of making mistakes. And that is how you pursue excellence. Suryakumar Yadav, the India skipper for the shortest format, is no different.
When in prime form, his batting comes across as T20 cricket’s Rajinikanth. Or rather, with his array of strokes in a 360-degree arc, Suryakumar’s batting template seems like an unstoppable force – the very reason why one ends up remembering Rajinikanth’s movies. Returning to cricket, ahead of the India-Bangladesh Asia Cup Super 4 encounter, Suryakumar’s batting looked nothing like an all-conquering hero from a film. At the ICC Academy, he was struggling to find his batting rhythm.
At times, he would premeditate his trigger and attempt to play shots through the on-side or slog-sweep. In that process, he probably undercut his strokes a touch. And then, he would go back to the basics of just looking to feel bat on ball. It wasn’t as if he didn’t middle his shots at all. Suddenly, from nowhere, a lofted stroke would thud into the boundary hoardings wide of long-off, but that was more the exception to the rule. On the given day, Suryakumar’s only goal was to blend his mind with instincts and method.
Let’s not forget that at the age of 34, Suryakumar had a sports hernia surgery. As you get older, it is tougher to recover from an injury. It isn’t just about physical pain. During the second half of an athlete’s career, an element of caution can supersede bravado, which in turn happens to be the essence of Suryakumar’s box-office batting.
On a more positive note, Arshdeep Singh, the left-arm pace bowler, seemed to be bowling at a fair clip, the fastest he has bowled in net sessions during this tournament. Meanwhile, Shivam Dube landed powerful blows in the arc between long-on and long-off. And that would have gladdened the hearts of the Indian think-tank. During some of the previous practice sessions, it felt as if Dube was short of confidence.
Most of the binoculars, though, were zoomed in on India’s captain. When Suryakumar was practicing to iron out the kinks in his batting, one couldn’t help but recall this famous quote from Kobe Bryant, “Take every practice, every game, like your last.”
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