Barely a few seconds had passed after drinks were called following an engaging first hour of play in the Duleep Trophy semi-finals. Ishan Kishan and Mohammed Shami wasted no time as they made their way out of the dressing room and towards Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, not out on 51. It’s impossible to gauge what was said, but the body language was quite revealing.Kishan, East Zone‘s captain, has perhaps heard this advice on loop from his seniors: Of the need to buckle down and play for time. To show discipline to survive testing spells, and have the judgment to know when an opportunity is worth taking. Shami too – hands on Sooryavanshi’s shoulder – chimed in.
The need for that chat possibly stemmed from the 15-year-old choosing aggressive shot options a little bit too often for first-class cricket. On 40, he was beaten in flight by Saransh Jain – recently India Test cap No. 320 – and sliced the ball to point. Yash Rathod put down a sitter. Shortly after, he attempted a switch-hit only for the offbreak to bounce over the stumps. Seeing another opportunity, he stepped out and walloped Saransh for six to bring up his half-century off just 42 balls.
But post the chat, for eight deliveries, Sooryavanshi held back, trying to leave deliveries, playing inside the line to let swinging deliveries pass or offering a solid forward defence to anything pitched a touch fuller. Even before one could infer that this was the gist of what his seniors said to him, Sooryavanshi’s audacity was on show again. He stepped down the pitch and hit through the line of a length ball from seamer Aryan Pandey. It had more elevation than distance but still cleared the straight boundary. Sooryavanshi wasn’t going to die wondering.
If luck had smiled differently on him, he would’ve been walking back second ball of the day. He chased a Yash Thakur delivery and nicked behind. Fortunately for him, it dropped short of the wicketkeeper. Aryan Juyal had positioned himself poorly. Had the edge carried, this might have become another entry in Sooryavanshi’s still modest red-ball catalogue, eliciting chatter about how his extraordinary T20 game wasn’t translating to the longer format.
Soon after the edge, Sooryavanshi stepped out of his crease and looked to slap a short ball over point. Having seen him chase anything full, Thakur had banged one in, hoping Sooryavanshi would take him on. A short square leg placed just prior to the over seemingly suggested Thakur wanted him to try and fetch a pull from over his right shoulder. Sooryavanshi took those plans out of play by staying beside the line of the ball and trying to hit it over point instead. He was late on the shot and was beaten. But the intent was striking. Here he was, barely into his innings and having already escaped a dismissal, choosing not to retreat into his shell.
This was largely the theme of his knock. There were some conventional strokes – a crunching drive through the covers when Thakur offered width, a straight drive for four and passages of solid defence when the ball demanded it – but the audacity was never far away. When Thakur pitched short on leg stump, Sooryavanshi took him on, hooking him for six even with fine leg on the rope. When Harsh Dubey, the left-arm spinner, went around the stumps with a plan to bowl middle-and-leg, it took Sooryavanshi just two balls to step out and hit him over deep midwicket.
There is something undeniably captivating about how Sooryavanshi just does not get overawed or overwrought by anything. Not the match situation. Not the pedigree of the bowler he’s facing. Not even the mistakes that could have gotten him out.
He’d raced to 92, and was set to bring up three-figures inside a session. A daddy hundred was perhaps there for the taking, too. But none of that seems to matter when there is a ball in front of him ripe to be hit out of the ground. That is the thrill, and the risk, of being him. A more conventional young batter, conscious of his modest red-ball record and the importance of making this innings count, might have shut down and played for the milestone. Sooryavanshi, for better or worse, does not appear wired that way.
As it turned out, his 92 was comfortably the most compelling knock on a day when 13 wickets fell. His 161-run opening stand with Abhimanyu Easwaran, who was rock solid at the other end for much of his 69 runs, had set East Zone up to try and nudge out Central Zone.
Shashank Kishore is a senior correspondent at Cricinfo