CHENNAI: A few nights ago, Rashid Khan had a doubt so he expressed it on Twitter. Its essence was where to bowl to Suryakumar Yadav, the marauding Mumbai batter who has multiple shots to every delivery. Khan had raised the doubt after Yadav had played one of the IPL’s all time great chasing knocks. Needing 200, Yadav torpedoed the Bangalore bowlers as he made 83 off 35 in 60 thrilling minutes of liquid T20 batting.
A few evenings after Khan raised that query, he had figured out where to bowl. He bowled 10 balls to Yadav and conceded only 17 runs, with no sixes. In the wider picture, a batter striking at 170 is usually considered a win. In the context of the match, though, Khan’s spell was worth a few oil fields: 4/30 in four overs.
For the majority of the other 16 overs though, it was the Yadav show. Forget the fact that he brought up his first-ever IPL hundred — he moved across his off stump and swept an almost wide yorker on a fifth stump line behind square off the last ball to bring it up — because a scoreboard rarely does just justice to the genius he unfurled under the Wankhede lights on Friday.
By the time the Yadav machine was cranking into full gear in front of a capacity crowd, cricketing royalty was copying his every shot to understand it. One of the sixes he hit defied a couple of laws — cricketing, physics and anatomy — known to humankind. A full length Mohammed Shami on off stump was driven over third man for six. Except, it wasn’t a drive. Yadav’s trigger movement was a drive before, at the very last possible moment, he opened the bat face to slice. Shami managed a smile. In the dug-out, Sachin Tendulkar played the shot with his hand a few times to try and understand what had happened. Piyush Chawla was laughing.
From the time the 32-year-old walked in till the time he left the field after raising his bat, it was pure theatre, T20 batting in 4K. The irony about this knock was he took time to get going. Twelve came off his first 10 balls, with his first six coming off his 19th delivery. In fact, it was Vishnu Vinod, the uncapped Kerala wicketkeeper who first attacked the backend of the innings.
At the end of the second time-out, Yadav had made 35 off 22, striking at 159. That’s when the fireworks truly began as he pumped Alzarri Joseph over long off. He moved from 53 off 34 to 103 off 49 in a breathtaking passage of play that saw him hit four fours and five sixes in the last three overs of the innings.
Brief scores: Mumbai 218/5 in 20 ovs
(Suryakumar 103 n.o, Vinod 30, Kishan 31; Rashid 4/30) bt Gujarat 191/8 in 20 ovs (Rashid 79, Miller 41; Madhwal 3/31, Piyush 2/36, Kartikeya 2/37).