The demons Sai Sudharsan had to quell at the St George’s Park had many faces. The bounce was awkward. The venerable seam-master of the past, Vernon Philander, behind the microphone, wished he got a spell or two. The carry and bounce were sufficient. The new ball bent and curved in the air. When it lost its glitter, it began to hoop off the surface. The left-arm seamer Nandre Burger was a throwback, a nasty new-ball wielder with burning eyes and scything stare. The breeze from the Algoa Bay might have whispered notes of doom into Sudharsan’s ears. The commentators kept reminding the audience of his age and rookie-ness. “Tough conditions for a 22-year-old,” or “just in his second game, a big test of his class.”
But if you had watched just Sudharsan bat and not the rest, barring KL Rahul, you would assume that the chatter of conditions and his inexperience were all big lies. All of these were true, just that Sudharsan made batting look frictionless. He made it look so because his batting is frictionless. Definitely, there was the odd ball he played and missed, one clattered onto his mid-riff, the ball that eventually consumed him leapt vengefully off the surface. But those aberrations aside, he exhibited the prowess, the technical knowhow, the assuredness and adaptability, to succeed at this level. He is not yet a finished product ready to hop the charts, but the promise exists, and it shone brightly on Tuesday
Several facets of his game stood out—the stillness of his head, the balance of his body, the transfer of his weight, the measuredness of his stride, the synergy of the different components of his body and the sturdiness of his defending. But more than all these attributes, his decision-making abilities stood out. He looked seldom confused in the middle. He knew which stroke to play when. The bowler-friendly conditions neither shrunk him into a cage of caution nor did it panic him into silliness.
There were several instances. Lizaad Williams tried to roughen up him with a bouncer, the first trick that adrenalin-high overseas seamers resort to at the sight of a batsman from the subcontinent on a quickish deck. He calmly let it whizz past him, dropping his wrists and arching his upper body. A few balls later, Williams would whip up another bouncer, quicker and searing into his head. He would instinctively hook, not a wild flapping of your hands, or a jailbreak hack, but a controlled hook, cleaning the stroke of its inherent brutality, keeping the ball down to the ropes.
It was the start of a non-violent mini counterpunch-spell. In the next over, he struck successive fours off Beuran Hendricks. He left the first ball alone. The next was full and swung away, which he guided past the third slip region, opening the face of his bat late and just rerouting the direction of the ball, Like they say about playing with the turn, he was playing with the swing. The wrists would move deliciously with the direction of the movement. There was no haste to feel the ball or reach out for the ball. The calm person he is outside the ground flows into his batting too,
The third boundary of the over summed up his craft. Hendricks erred on the fuller side. Sudharsan took a stride back, as he has throughout the knock of 62 to cope with the bounce of the surface, before he took a front-foot stride, the feet stopping exactly where he wanted it to. Followed a crisp swing of the bat that redirected the ball to extra cover. There is more elegance than flamboyance to his driving. Earlier, he essayed a gorgeous drive on the rise, and before his knock ended, perhaps prematurely, he would soothe the eyes of the audience with another. He is gifted with the well-worn cliche of left-handed grace, but he does not look to slap or slash or swipe outside the off-stump. No frills, no indulgences, yet thrilling to watch. The nervous prodding of Tilak Varma, his partner for a while, perhaps enhanced the beauty of his batting.
The flurry of boundaries, though, did not over-excite him. He reverted to the defend-tap-guide formula that had ensured him both runs and stability. In the next 24 balls, he hit just one boundary. That one stroke too was dexterous, velcro-hands guiding the ball between cover point and point. A fleeting, dodgy spell followed, where Hendricks beat him a couple of times with seam movement. Perhaps he thought the swing had subsided. It indeed had, but the left-armer was purchasing movement off the seam. But Sudharsan quickly retained his serenity, and stitched a 68-run stand with KL Rahul that would form the spine of India’s resistance. Spin too would grit its teeth, but bred on Chepauk turners, he attacked both Keshav Maharaj and Aiden Markram, besides milking them for singles.
A pity it was when he perished, for the innings seemed designed for something more special. But soon the travails of his fellow batsmen would resume, and the pitch would again wear a face of fury. Perhaps, it was always furious, just that Sudharsan made it look peaceful.
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