T20 World Cup: The one Suryakumar Yadav shot that makes him a perfect No.4

The left-handed seamer Farooqui had perfectly identified the pitch’s nature by then, and had even beaten Suryakumar once with a slower cutter. And so he tried again, rolling his fingers, and allowing the ball to grip the surface by whipping the ball down onto the track well short of a length.

Suryakumar had almost got moving into intended on-the-up punch down the ground but had to adjust to the lack of pace as the ball almost stopped on gripping the surface. Usually when the pace disintegrates like that on a sluggish track and the ball stops, the batsmen can lose their shape. And if they are still intent on hitting a big shot, they tend to go across the line – a drag pull would have been an understandable bail-out shot.

But Suryakumar wasn’t in mood for any bail-outs. Incredibly, he still continued with his original thought of going downtown. With no pace nor the expected bounce from that short a length, it wasn’t going to be easy to punch it on the up. Somehow, Suryakumar held his shape even as he adjusted his downward batswing speed. Neither did he go frantic at it. He still fisted it up and over and did it in such a relaxed manner, not going hard at it. The wind perhaps helped as the ball soared along up and over the straight boundary.

If it wasn’t going to be a drag-pull, surely the bottom-hand was expected to come off the handle for him to pull off that shot in that direction against that slower ball from that length. But that didn’t happen either, as everything flowed along seamlessly, fluidly. What should have been an iffy choice to go down the ground, sending the ball straight up, gaining elevation instead of distance to use that commentator’s cliche, and holing out somewhere behind mid-on region, it instead flew over the boundary.

The In-betweener

It’s that kind of skill and mindset that sets him apart in the middle overs. These pitches either need the impetuous shotmaking ability of Rishabh Pant or the serene skills of Suryakumar. He repeatedly swept the spinners, and lofted the seamers in the middle overs to walk the talk.

“During the most difficult phase of T20 – like between 7 to 14, 7 to 16, – I had thought about that a lot before making my debut for India,” Suryakumar said. “If I do well here, if I bat with a good strike rate, then I can be a game-changer on that day. When I kept doing it repeatedly, I felt that this is my game plan going forward. Because if you bat in the power play, you know the players are inside. You can play good cricketing shots and hit boundaries,” he said.

“I like to take charge in that phase, I enjoy it. I started chewing my gum harder when he (Kohli) got out. I just backed my game and my instincts. I have played a lot of cricket with him (Rohit Sharma); he understands my game and sits back and enjoys it.”

That 17th over downtown six against Farooqui, who did nothing wrong with that slower cutter, was one such “good cricketing shot” from the middle-overs wizard, who got in the 7th over and went out in the last ball of the 17th over after sealing up the game for India.