The shot looked out of the world, as if it defied laws of physics. Generating the angle way outside off stump against a pacer before scooping the ball over behind square-leg for a six. It was surreal and was a heady mix of class and innovation. It had been dissected over and over again. It has been discussed over the dinner table, then over breakfast, and in the 24 hours since Suryakumar Yadav put up that sweep-hitting shot against Zimbabwe, the Instagram reel of that scoop on the official T20 World Cup account has crossed 1, 637, 261 plays. Not to mention other social media posts.
For SKY, as he is fondly called, this was not something out of the blue. "I practiced that stroke a lot when I used to play rubber-ball cricket," he told former head coach Ravi Shastri after the match. It seldom happens that one man's exploit overshadows the win of a team touted as potential winners. The Melbourne Cricket Ground where India posted the 71-run win too was abuzz. Supporters were in a frenzy yelling in front of the TV camera as the ball sailed over the ropes. Left-arm pacer Richard Ngarava who bowled that final over too would have wondered where he could have pitched.
Sometimes it's worthwhile to cherish the moment than to try and explain. Yet, it is tempting to break the entire shot down. Having been on the receiving end of some Suryakumar smacking earlier, Ngarava came over the wicket to create a tougher angle in the final over. He goes for that wide yorker. Suryakumar shuffled a bit, moved his front foot across on the wide line to sweep the left-arm pacer with his rubber wrists, generating enough power to send it over the square-leg boundary.
Zimbabwe head coach David Houghton was left speechless in the dugout and so were everyone who were watching it. As Mpumelelo Mbangwa called it on air, it was “ridiculous”. But not for Suryakumar. He had played a similar shot at least thrice even before that one and would do it again on the final delivery. This is what he does day and day out. This is what he has been doing throughout 2022. It is what made Rohit Sharma call him the X-factor for his team. He is truly the 360 degree batter since the days of peak AB de Villiers.
The way he has been able to play the field, leaving the opposition captains hand on head moving the fielders around every single ball. And he does it with no fuss to an extent where all he sees when he comes out to bat is the gaps. He said as much in a chat with R Ashwin on BCCI.tv. “When I go into bat, I am just completely in a different zone altogether, just around myself and enjoying everything I do,” he said on BCCI.tv.
Only when an athlete enters such a zone where they see nothing but themselves and doing what they do best, they would be able to deliver with the kind of impact and consistency Suryakumar has shown so far. And it doesn’t come without hard work. He has practiced the scoop shot so much that it has become his second nature. He can go on and play one after another like defending a ball off the front foot because of the success he has seen playing those shots for years. And a lot of thinking happens moments before he plays such a shot. "You gotta be thinking what the bowler is thinking at that time, what the field is. You got to know how long the boundary is behind. When I stand there, I feel it's about 60-65m, the pace of the ball, I just take it on the sweet spot of the bat, if it hits, then it just goes down all the way," he would say in a chat with Shastri later on Sunday night.
Shastri’s successor Rahul Dravid attests that. "I think he's worked very hard. I think one of the things about Surya is just the amount of hard work that he's put in in the nets, in thinking about his game, his fitness. If I look at Surya from a couple of years ago, just to see how he takes care of his body and the amount of time he spends on his fitness, I think he's just really earning the reward for a lot of the hard work that he's put in on and off the field, and long may it continue," Dravid said after the match.
For any athlete, phases where they look invincible to the rest of the world are hard to come by. At best, they come once in a career if they are among the best, twice if you are Sachin Tendulkar. Virat Kohli had a stretch in 2016 where he did not seem like he could get out. He knows what it’s like to be in such a zone. And when he comments on a player, saying that he is on a different level, you have to take him on his word. For Suryakumar, at the moment, is batting on a level that is several notches above the rest of the world.