Vaibhav Sooryavanshi had endured an underwhelming opening phase of the Tri-Nation A series, scoring just 117 runs in his first four matches. Scores of 14, 44, 21 and 38 showed the precocious promise of the 15-year-old, while a strike rate of 150.6 revealed the aggression. But the end product was, by his own standards, a far cry from what he was capable of. Before the final against Sri Lanka A, India-A coach Hrishikesh Kanitkar sat his former India U-19 protege down, and offered him a simple piece of advice. “Tu apna natural game khel, zyada soch mat. (Play your natural game, and don’t think too much).”
It worked a treat. Sooryavanshi demolished the Sri Lanka bowling attack in a whirlwind 94 off just 29 balls, with ten fours and eight sixes struck at a strike rate of 324.13. He may have missed out on a famous first List A century, but he had to settle for the record of the fastest List A half-century, off 11 balls, breaking Sri Lankan Kaushalya Weeraratne’s 12-ball record that had stood since before Sooryavanshi had even been born.
“When runs were not coming, I sat down with Hrishi sir to discuss a few things, and he gave me a free hand to play freely,” Sooryavanshi told Sportstar.
“That’s when he told me, ‘Tu apna natural game khel, zyada soch mat’ (you play your natural game and don’t think too much about anything else). That motivated me, and I continued to back myself, and I’m happy that things worked out well,” he added.
Despite his excellence in the IPL, the Tri-Nation series was always bound to be a step up for the young Sooryavanshi. In recent years, the sport has swung strongly towards big-hitting. Once upon a time in the 20-over format, a 200 score was considered formidable. Now, it’s barely par. Batters now treat dot balls with a snigger and a smirk, something to be avoided. A strike rate of 200 is often trivialised as the normal, to the extent that a casual viewer forgets that, in the 50-over format, a strike rate of 100 translates to a run rate of 6 per over and a team total of 300 — strongly above-average.
Sooryavanshi is used to putting away a loose delivery for a six. In fact, he’s used to putting away good ones for sixes, too. But the composure to leave a delivery, resisting the temptation to hit every ball out of the ground, was something that would prove the southpaw’s mettle. The slower, spin-friendly pitches in Sri Lanka, paired with the specific demands of a 50-over innings, would require him to recalibrate his IPL approach.
“These conditions were slightly different, so it threw some challenges initially. So, I was trying too hard, but wasn’t being able to execute the plans.”
Across the first four matches of the tournament, it seemed that Sooryavanshi was struggling to find that maturity. A post-match scuffle with Sri Lanka A players added further fuel to the youngster’s hot-headed fire. Was all this coming too soon for such a young player?
In the end, all the overthinking and overanalysis proved moot. One simple sentence put to bed an emotional storm and unleashed another. Sooryavanshi’s POTM display in the final was just the latest reminder that this rising star is carving his own path, not playing the game as it has been, but the way he wants to.