Cricket’s young prince Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is enjoying the pressure of conquering the kings of the world game. In the bust-or-boom Eliminator, he bested Sunrisers Hyderabad’s power pair of Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma; he reduced Pat Cummins to the depths of humiliation; he made the world wonder again of his glowing potential.
Is it bottomless? The more one thinks one has fathomed his genius, the more unfathomable it looks. His 29-ball 97, 72 off which came in maximums, expedited Rajasthan Royals to 243 for 8, a total Sunrisers Hyderabad fell short by 47 runs. Jofra Archer and Co completed what a 15-year-old had started.
Cummins has a career longer than Sooryavanshi’s age; his honours board reads multi-format World Cups, the World Test Championship and Ashes; he has conquered the finest batsmen in the world, crushed their egos and ended their careers. But he would remember with astonishment the night a 15-year-old felled him, a boy not yet out of school schooling him.
It took just three balls for the schooling to begin. Cummins had erred on the fuller side, only a wee bit, but all he saw when he looked up from his follow-through was the ball soaring over his head to the fence. He watched, his mouth agape, bewildered by Sooryavanshi’s audacity.
Soon, the brainiest of seamers stood brain-scrambled when the teenager unleashed a torrent of sixes, every blow measured and timed to precision.
Cummins, recipient of four sixes, put on a face of defiance, managed even a smile. But deep inside he was reeling. Cummins realised, rather he and all the luminous bowling stars of the league, that Sooryavanshi was not like any other 15-year-old. It’s time the audience looked beyond his age, as his poise is akin to someone in his mid-twenties.
Cummins’s next ball was full too. With hands like a whiplash, he crunched it through covers. A proper red-ball shot that purred through the turf. Cummins winked. He was baiting him to drive away from the body. A wide followed, but the ball after, he went full again and Sooryavanshi thrashed him over long-on.
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Cummins winced – the ever-smiling Australian was no longer enjoying the duel he was clearly coming second-best in. The worst was yet to come – two more sixes streamed off the bat, as though the only purpose of the blade was to hit sixes. Cummins gave up. He took himself out of the attack. Rajasthan had waltzed to 45 runs off three overs. Eight balls, 31 runs. It tells a story with many layers.
The captain torn to shreds, the rest withered. Sakib Hussain, fearful of getting hit, turned erratic. He was hit for three sixes, including the one that beat Chris Gayle’s record for the most sixes in an IPL season. It was fetched in Gayle-esque style too, clearing the front leg, thumping over long-off. If he was watching, the Jamaican would have asked himself – what was I doing at 15?
The next 30-odd minutes was just a lurid fever dream of sixes. The audience, and the bowlers, would wonder: Was it real? Or an illusion or nightmare (for bowlers, that is).
Like Gayle’s, it is not wild, blind hitting, but methodical and sensible (for Sooryavanshi, at least). The bravado should not be dismissed as exuberance of youth, but only heightened belief in his ability and clarity in execution. He is mature enough not to fear bowlers, but confident enough to ferry them to the fence.
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He missed his hundred by three runs – the fastest IPL century, another record of the Jamaican – was just a hit away. But records can wait, as something more spectacular is unfolding.
There were other precious knocks in Rajasthan’s mountainous total of 244, like Dhruv Jurel’s 21-ball 50 and skipper Riyan Parag’s 26 off 12 balls. The 200 was completed in 14.4 overs, and fleetingly IPL’s first 300 total seemed like a possibility on the horizon.
It didn’t come. But none of these mattered. Only Sooryavanshi mattered. It could be a sign of things to come.
Archer’s bows
When inspired and when the joints don’t rebel, Jofra Archer is a sensory delight. The run-up is pure athletic expression that sprint coaches would covet for; the pace tests the elasticity of the eyes, the shattered stumps fills the audience with a sudden chill, like a car chase in an action thriller. Archer’s nuclear-tipped arrow shattered Sunrisers’ biggest hope and the stumps of Travis Head. His trusted associate Abhishek Sharma had long retreated to the pavilion, second ball of the innings. Head had backed away, extracting space for the free swing of his arms. But the ball beat his hands. Head has quick hands, but the ball was quicker — a 150kph thunderbolt.
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Just five balls ago, a 150-clicks hard-length ball had beaten the rampaging Ishan Kishan for pace. His ill-fated cut looped into the cover fielder’s palms. At 57 for 4 after Ishan’s exit and 81 for 5 when Heinrich Klaasen departed, Sunrisers had all their routes to the second qualifier blocked.
Brief Scores: RR 244/8 in 20 overs (Sooryavanshi 97, Jurel 50; Hinge 3/54) beat SRH 196 in 19.2 overs (Nitish Reddy 38; Archer 3/58) by 47 runs.
