Not easy being Suryakumar Yadav

Yadav has seen it all in the past year or so – from being the only international batsman to cross 1,000 runs in T20 Internationals in calendar 2022 (1,164 runs in 31 T20I innings) to now searching for his first run.

It’s not easy being Suryakumar Yadav. When he scores runs in abundance, there is pressure on him to repeat it in each and every innings. When he doesn’t score, there is pressure on him to get back to the form he is known for.

On his last six visits to the crease in competitive cricket, there were four first-ball dismissals – three in the one-day internationals against Australia last month and one in the Indian Premier League for the Mumbai Indians against Delhi Capitals on April 11.

Even on the field, the owner of an otherwise safe pair of hands messed it up twice in the deep in the MI-vs-DC game. The first time, he misjudged the direction of the ball and missed the catch. The second time, the ball landed near his eye. To add insult to injury, the ball landed over the boundary rope for a six both times, benefitting DC’s Axar Patel.

Left-arm bowlers

The four first-ball dismissals were all to left-arm bowlers of international repute – Australia paceman Mitchell Starc in identical LBWs in the Mumbai and Visakhapatnam ODIs; bowled in an awkward manner by spinner Ashton Agar in the Chennai ODI, and caught down the leg side with a faint glove into wicketkeeper MS Dhoni’s gloves off spinner Mitchell Santner in the IPL match in Mumbai on April 8.

Dinesh Lad, noted coach of Rohit Sharma, Shardul Thakur and other cricketers and Dronacharya awardee, told Moneycontrol that nothing was wrong with Yadav’s technique and his dismissals had nothing to do against left-arm bowlers.

“Looking at the way he has been dismissed in recent times, he is going for the shot each and every time from the first ball. All he needs to do is stay at the crease for some time, wait for four or five balls, and then his form will come back automatically,” Lad said.

Yadav has seen it all in the past year or so – from being the only international batsman to cross 1,000 runs in T20 Internationals in calendar 2022 (1,164 runs in 31 T20I innings) to now searching for his first run.

Every press conference involving Yadav’s team in recent times is incomplete without a question on his form. Even his MI teammate, leg-spinner Piyush Chawla, who bowled tidily (4-0-22-3) on April 11, was not spared after the batsman pulled right-arm medium-pacer Mukesh Kumar into the hands of fine leg fielder Kuldeep Yadav off the first ball he faced in a tense run-chase, which MI finally pulled off in a last-ball thriller.

Chawla said: “Surya’s form is not a concern… Surya getting out to the first ball, it happens in cricket. The situation that we were in, it might have been a six. The kind of batsman he is, high on confidence, it is a matter of 10 balls and if he hits three boundaries, he is back in form.”

Yadav has the backing of the team management. It is not for nothing that he has earned the nickname of India’s ‘Mr 360’ for his wide range of shots.

Mumbai Indians batting coach Kieron Pollard said on the eve of the match against CSK on April 7: “We have no concerns about Surya’s form… unfortunately, as cricketers, our bad days have been highlighted rather than looking at the positives – what he has done in the past 18 months in cricket as an individual. So, we do it on a day-by-day basis… we are confident he will do justice to his talent and we continue to back him.”

MI head coach Mark Boucher was asked the same question 24 hours later, after 32-year-old Yadav fell for one run, courtesy the ‘Dhoni Review System’.

Potential form

Boucher said: “Surya is an extremely talented cricketer, one of the world’s best T20 cricketers, if not the best… He is a fantastic player… I don’t want to put too much pressure on him. We all know what he can do. That’s just the game of cricket, go through little patches where you struggle for form. We all back him and try to set him some new challenges, get his mind off his own game, if that’s what will help him to try to get some good form going into the middle and later stages of the tournament.”

Even his skipper Rohit Sharma felt sorry for Yadav. While Sharma said that Yadav got two very good deliveries from Starc first up in the first two ODIs in Mumbai and Vizag, he felt Yadav chose the wrong shot in the Chennai ODI.

That said, Sharma added after the ODI series on March 22: “He plays so well, to be honest. We've seen that over the last couple of years. He's played spin really well, which is why we wanted to hold him back and give him that role of last 15-20 overs where he could play his game. But it's really unfortunate that he could only play three deliveries in the (ODI) series. That can happen to anyone. But the potential, the quality is always there.”

Yadav is not alone in this poor run, falling too frequently for nought. Greats in the past have been through this phase and bounced back strongly. After India’s Mohinder Amarnath went through a sequence of 4, 7, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 in Tests against Pakistan and the West Indies from September to December 1983, he was dropped from the squad for one Test. Amarnath did not give up. He returned to score 36 and 101 not out in his comeback Test 10 months later.

Sri Lankan legend Marvan Atapattu had the worst start to his Test career with scores of 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0 in his first six innings in 1994. He went back to domestic cricket, became mentally and technically sound, and went on to score six double-centuries in Tests, and was seventh on the elite list of batsmen with double-century scores.

As they say often in cricket, it’s just a matter of one good knock and all will be well. Yadav is that one knock away from returning to his good old days. That could just be in MI’s next match against Kolkata Knight Riders at home on April 16.