BENGALURU: Just before the start of Day Two of the Duleep Trophy semifinal between East Zone and Central Zone, a member of the BCCI's media team quietly took Vaibhav Sooryavanshi to one side. The southpaw, facing throwdowns next to the boundary line by the dugout, at some level is a content generating machine and the BCCI wanted to create some new content with the sport's hottest property, just in case.
So, one of the members, presumably the media team, asked him to start juggling a ball with his bat. The kid obliged. For a few minutes, while his opening partner, Abhimanyu Easwaran, was shadow batting 10 metres away, Sooryavanshi was generating material for the world's richest cricket board. The broadcaster wanted something on tap, just in case.
When it was time to walk out to the middle to signal the start of proceedings on Monday, Sooryavanshi walked ahead of Easwaran. An unmistakable swagger accompanying his every stride. When Easwaran had made his first-class debut in December 2013, his East Zone batting partner was two-and-a-half years old. Almost 13 years later, a small section of the public wanted to see the kid. So they stood over the top of a stationary vehicle to peer into CoE's Ground-1. Just in case.
In the end, he fell short of a century by eight runs but he had already changed the complexion of the match in the space of 100 minutes. His whirlwind 82-ball effort was filled with boundaries (seven sixes and as many as fours). He was granted one life, a skier put down by Yash Rathod at backward point on 40, and he made the opponents pay for that unforced error.
He had made his intentions clear minutes after start of play as two wild and premeditated strokes off Yash Thakur could have both resulted in his wicket. He survived. Ironically, he used Thakur's next over to get going as two shots — including one straight six to a slightly full delivery — was a sign of things to come. It brought out the claps from the players sat in the dugout.
Even as Easwaran, called up to the Test squad multiple times, was typically understated, his partner at the other end was in white-ball mode. He was happy to charge the bowlers — irrespective of pacer or spinner — or trying to mow them over cow corner.
There were some plays and misses but when it connected, it sailed over the ropes. What he possesses a lot of right now is a very uncomplicated way of batting. There is full clarity of thought. And when you can marry that HD-like lucidity to his bat swing, it usually travels. Physics and geometry.
When Rajat Patidar, who skippered Central Zone to the title last year had seen enough from his pacers, he brought on Saransh Jain into the attack. Could the freshly minted Test debutant keep the 15-year-old quiet? Not really. Off his very second over, he launched him over mid-wicket. Elders weren't about to be treated with respect. Not here. Not today. There was another one over long on. He even found time to dance around in his crease to reverse hit him for a four. The fun stopped soon after as he holed out at deep mid-wicket off Harsh Dubey.
As Sooryavanshi dragged himself off the square, a run short of his highest first-class score, another plane had just landed in the city's airport in the background. This kid's red-ball career, though, is going only way. On the tarmac, ready for takeoff.
Brief scores: Central Zone 266 and 45/3 in 20 ovs (Mukesh 2/14) vs East Zone 266 in 57 ovs (Easwaran 69, Sooryavanshi 92, Gharami 25, Pandey 3/43, Yash 3/66, Dubey 4/66)