IPL 2023: Surya eclipses Rashid’s titanic effort

Scorching Surya

A last-ball six completed the most magnificent of centuries in the league, a knock of regal stroke-play that left the audience both ecstatic as well as exhausted. Watching a Suryakumar Yadav knock is a multilayered visual experience. There is the sheer thrill of fours and sixes searing off his blade—11 of his strikes reached the ropes, six over them; there is the jaw-dropping disbelief as he threads unusual gaps; there is shock in how he manages to demonstrate a fresh layer every time, as though he is an alchemist and his mind a constantly ticking laboratory.

You think you have watched all the strokes he could ever play. Then he produces another you have not seen. On Friday, he executed what could be christened the on-the-hop back-foot off-drive.

.@surya_14kumar set the stage on fire 🔥 🔥 with his maiden IPL TON & bagged the Player of the Match award as @mipaltan beat #GT. 🙌 🙌

Scorecard ▶️ https://t.co/o61rmJX1rD #TATAIPL | #MIvGT pic.twitter.com/1yUb8gX0nW

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 12, 2023

Yadav has a lexicon of himself, rather a dialect that whirrs the ears of the hapless bowlers. Thrice he played the shot, but it was the six off Alzarri Joseph that captured the essence of it. The length was not quite full, the ball was angling in from outside the off-stump—in another mood, he could have whipped it over mid-wicket.

But here, he hung back, met the ball on the bounce and lifted him over long-off, the high front-elbow winking skywards and the front-foot hopping just after he had struck the ball. The whole weight is on the back-foot, and the hop is a byproduct of him transferring his weight onto the shot.

The dazzle of Yadav’s array of improvised strokes behind the stumps leaves you blind to the grandeur of his stroke-making in front of the stumps.

𝗢𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗲 🔥@surya_14kumar brings up his 4th fifty in his last five innings 👏

Follow the Match: https://t.co/o61rmJX1rD#TATAIPL | #MIvGT pic.twitter.com/xcaFmZbXkX

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 12, 2023

He offered a peep into this dimension of his game, as though he wanted to display the more classical side of his on yet another true-bounced surface where he could play through the line and on the rise, besides nullifying the dangers of Rashid Khan with sweeps, which not surprisingly was his most productive strokes (23). But as many as 54 of his 103 runs arrived in front of the wicket, and it was deep into the innings that he really began to target the spaces behind the stumps.

It’s not the line of the bowling, the nature of the pitch or the placement of fields that seems to dictate his scoring strokes. But pure whim, as though he woke up this fine morning and decided that this was his day to hit boundaries down the ground. Such was his touch that it seemed irrelevant where or how the bowlers bowled. Yadav would bury them, where he chose to hit them.

Few other batsmen have dealt Rashid with as much authority as Yadav. He would bend really low, get his front-pad outside the line of the off-stump and sweep him hard and low behind the square. A rattled Rashid, who bowled sublimely for three wickets that disarrayed Mumbai, would pull his length back, whereupon he would cut, hit down the ground or milk for singles and twos.

𝙋𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝘾𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨 👏👏@surya_14kumar lights up Mumbai with his maiden IPL 1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ 🤩

Follow the Match: https://t.co/o61rmJX1rD#TATAIPL | #MIvGT pic.twitter.com/dQQ8jjTv1s

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 12, 2023

Rashid had just dismissed Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan after a breezy first wicket stand of 61 runs, but just the second ball he faced off the leg-spinner he swept him for a four. And that after missing the sweep first ball. He would sweep him twice more to the fence, and of the 30 runs Rashid leaked, 17 belonged to Yadav.

He was relatively cautious in dealing with him, with the awareness that he could attack the rest. And so he did, sparing no one, and hurtling to one of the most glorious hundreds in this league.

Rashid, the solo band

By the fourth over, when Titans had lost Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha and Hardik Pandya for a combined 26 runs, the chase seemed a lost cause.

David Miller and Rahul Tewatia injected brief hope, but they departed in the space of two balls to leave the result a foregone conclusion.

For his maiden IPL 5️⃣0️⃣ and a crucial knock, Rashid Khan becomes our 🔝 performer from the second innings of the #MIvGT clash #TATAIPL

Here is his batting summary 🎥 pic.twitter.com/2ZxWpTKIve

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 12, 2023

But Rashid did not give up. He threw caution to the winds and smoked Mumbai’s crestfallen bowlers all around the park. Most times, he premeditates but is seldom ever caught in two minds.

He goes full-throttle with his shots—so much so that sometime in future he could be experimented up the order, as a pinch-hitter like Sunil Narine in the past for Kolkata Knight Riders. He struck ten humungous sixes in a maddening 32-ball 79 not out, where his smooth bat-flow was a delight to behold, and the reason he sweet-spots the ball. Another day, his all-round efforts would have been the day’s story, but there was a far more luminescent performer—Yadav.

For his maiden IPL 5️⃣0️⃣ and a crucial knock, Rashid Khan becomes our 🔝 performer from the second innings of the #MIvGT clash #TATAIPL

Here is his batting summary 🎥 pic.twitter.com/2ZxWpTKIve

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 12, 2023

Khan’s onslaught did not produce a heist, but ensured that Titans’ run-rate did not suffer. He also exposed the fragility of Mumbai’s death-over bowling, without their injured talismans Jasprit Bumrah and Jofra Archer. But if Yadav continues to bat as otherworldly as he had been in the tournament, their weaknesses would no longer matter.

Brief Scores: Mumbai Indians 218 for 5 in 20 overs (Suryakumar Yadav 103 not out; Rashid Khan 4/30) bt Gujarat Titans 191 for 8 in 20 overs ( Rashid Khan 79 not out; Akash Madhwal 3/31) by 27 runs