Suryavanshi’s batting comes from a child-like wonder

Probably the best thing to happen to Vaibhav Suryavanshi after his headbanging 35 ball century is that duck on Thursday night. Other than dishing out the starter lesson from Cricket 101 – that the lessons ain’t stopping, boyo – everyone can breathe normally again. Social media can resume hyperventilating about MI Rising (Again) and Rajasthan Royals get the space to look over what has been a messy season.

But even when this IPL is done, there will be no ignoring Suryavanshi. His ascent onto public notice is many Indian cricket things rolled into one. The most soulful of which has to be how news of prodigious young talent almost instinctively, automatically works the levers across Indian cricket. It’s like a Chinese whisper about ability in one corner of the country which emerges at the other end, completely accurate, pristine – even pure. An Australian friend said it was the perfecting of ‘pathways’, ho hum. But what’s Suryavanshi’s story without a smidgeon of romance?

According to a newspaper report, he was first seen by Bihar junior coach Ashok Kumar in a Patna academy camp. Kumar realised he couldn’t pick him for the under-16s Vijay Merchant Trophy (where players must at least be 14) but he could for the under-19s Vinoo Mankad Trophy. Where he told the match referee Vishnu Vardhan of the 12-year-old playing. Vardhan sends the video of the 12-year-old’s 89 versus Assam to head of under-19 selectors S Sharath - who then dispatched one of his colleagues to endorse what Sharath had seen on video.

Vaibhav Suryavanshi had been spotted, identified, noticed. He would be shepherded beyond state cricket and pitchforked straight into the India under-19s: in a u-19 Test vs Australia u19, and the ACC under-19 Asia Cup.

Few months later in early February, I heard a story about his Rajasthan Royals November trials which I never forgot. After RR staff watched Vaibhav for a few balls, the trials were stopped.

The sidearm throwers were asked to crank the speeds up to 155kph and RR’s high performance director Zubin Bharucha described the scene then: “There was no change in how he approached the ball… in how much time he had on the shot from release point to connection time. No change… It’s not possible that he would have learned that or he would have been taught that. That is how he has been gifted.” Bharucha then went on to make what he knew was a big call: “He is probably second only to Tendulkar in talent, raw talent, that I have seen… There are other factors that will make him successful but if you ask just talent to hit a ball I think second to probably Tendulkar.”

Bharucha is usually a committed hyperbole-squasher but still it seemed a stretch. We’d talked about time and space in cricket. He said while space – i.e. the range and ability to manoeuvre the ball to any part of the ground – is easily defined, “You cannot define time… you can only define it in the sense that you see it.”

Two months later, everybody saw it.

With that first six off Shardul Thakur somewhere between extra-cover-long off and our belief systems. Followed by that 35-ball century and on its completion, in a compressed half- smile and low-key salute to his dugout.

On the Cricbuzz IPL video show, Adam Gilchrist said that when he first heard of a 14-year-old picked in the auction, he thought it was a marketing ‘gimmick’ – and RR would take a few seasons to blood him. As did everyone else, except perhaps the fates. The question as to how someone who is still growing into his own body could generate so much power, experts agree that much of it is in the long wind-up and beautiful arabesque of his backlift.

It is not the ruler-straight geometry of the bat’s ascent and descent, but rather a left-hander’s whippy, creative calligraphy. He is tall for his age around 5ft6ish, but there’s no knowing whether he will grow. He has a chunky build and like Tendulkar, is broad-backed with what appear to be big hands and strong wrists and legs. His pudding bowl hair-cut from early videos is now trendily styled; and before turning up to do his post-century match interview, an attempt at creating a whiff of sideburns was visible.

Then came the duck and we exhaled. And the end, this is a child. In his head, he rushes out into the middle to play this game that consumes him, nowadays against big men under large lights, in a colosseum of noise. The gusto with goes after the ball on sighting it; with his wristy, curvy backlift and the energy of his bat speed which is translated into velocity, trajectory and distance.

His body wears odd-size shirts and every time he swivels, pirouettes, falls away or goes ont his knees to gleefully direct the ball to unexpected destinations, they rise over his mid-riff still occupied by its baby-fat. In a world filled by six-packed, bearded gents, Vaibhav Suryavanshi’s batting comes from a child-like wonder. As his enraptured audience, the sanest and indeed most considerate thing to do at this point in his life, is just walk beside him quietly in wonderment.