Suryakumar Yadav had smashed a six off the first ball he faced in T20I cricket from England's Jofra Archer. The right-hander had pulled the express pacer over the fine leg region. It has not even been two years since that home series against England, and today, he is the No. 1 batter in the ICC T20I rankings.
Yadav is a tough cookie. He prepares according to formats and tournaments. And his unbelievable shot-making—scoops and sweeps from wide of off-stump—in the ongoing T20 World Cup in Australia is the result of the hard work he put in at the Parsee Gymkhana in Mumbai under the watchful eyes of coach Vinayak Mane.
"He is always prepared. I have played a lot of cricket with him in Bharat Petroleum and at the Gymkhana. He always played the shots behind the wicket well. Six or seven years ago, he realised he had to master hitting the straight shots too. I used to train him accordingly and arrange the bowlers," Mane discussed the making of India's first notable 360-degree batter with moneycontrol.com.
Yadav had requested Gymkhana secretary Khodadad Yazdegardi to prepare green and bouncy pitches to simulate the Australian conditions in Mumbai. "The club is always supportive. We had a lot of side-armers who threw the ball at him with extra pace, along with different types of bowlers. The Gymkhana ground is well-maintained with a lot of grass. It makes it conducive to preparing against fast bowlers. He batted for long periods, and there were interactions with the bowlers," added Mane.
Brave and smart batter
The 32-year-old's batsmanship is straight out of the AB de Villiers stylebook. He can bend down on one knee and scoop with a unique technique where the ball would whoosh past a few inches from his ears to the fence. He practised it for many years during the rubber-ball cricket days, and after his unbeaten 61 off 25 balls against Zimbabwe, De Villiers tweeted that the Mumbai boy is not too far from matching him.
Mane called him brave for executing the unbelievable 360-degree shots. "Surya has developed his ramp shots into sweep shots against the fast bowlers. He is courageous to do it, as you can get hit on your face. He has understood that you don't need to hit it hard to play those shots. There is a lot of smartness involved. He uses the pace of the ball and the bowler. And he times the ball, that's it."
The new khadoos in Mumbai cricket
The term khadoos is synonymous with Bombay cricket. And it originated from the ethos of batters holding on to their wicket to deny victory to the opponent. Yadav has transformed the idea of khadoos. Now every kid in the city wants to bat like him. The traditional style of cricket is blurry at the moment. "Abhi change ho gaya hai (it has changed). I have faced it as a coach. I am from the older generation and played a lot of serious red-ball cricket. We wanted to play shots, but we were not allowed. As a player, I realised how it is crucial to play different shots when I played one-day cricket. We had a reverse sweep then.
"Surya and the other boys like Sarfaraz Khan and Prithvi Shaw play shots these days. These guys developed this skill for T20. Most youngsters want to play these shots. Surya has contributed to that change, and he is the frontrunner. Had it not been for these kinds of shots, Mumbai would have never won the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 trophy," said Mane.
Character batter
Vilas Godbole, Yadav's U-25 coach, feels it is unfortunate that his ward received an India call-up after a decade of first-class cricket. And he is not surprised by his recent heroics. "When I saw him for the first time, I was amazed. In Mumbai, when Vijay Manjrekar used to walk around the pitch, he would have that aura and confidence. Surya has the same confidence when he walks in.
"He is a character batsman and loved his batting from Day 1. People laughed at me when I said he would play for India," said Godbole, who believes Surya is a different type of khadoos. "Alag type ka khadoos hai, who wants to dominate the bowlers."
Godbole feels the unconventional style of Surya's batting is for T20 requirements, and he can play normal cricketing shots in red-ball cricket.
A Test call-up could be near for a game-changer like him, but before that, he will be keen to dominate England in the semi-final in Adelaide on Thursday. Yadav is India's second-highest run-getter in the tournament thus far, with 225 runs in five games; after Virat Kohli (245 runs).
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