Even the seemingly unrelenting Guwahati rain on Tuesday would stop for IPL’s most-anticipated duel of the Mumbai Indians vs Rajasthan Royals game. And when Jasprit Bumrah’s first delivery landed in the slot on leg-and-middle, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s bat was already where it needed to be. The ball began its flight towards the long-on stands. The backlift — high, exaggerated, past the vertical — had once again entered the cricketing consciousness of everyone watching.
“Every time someone says his backlift is too high, he will get into problems, I chuckle,” says Zubin Bharucha, the coach who has mentored Sooryavanshi since he was 13. “He is smashing 155 kmph balls, hitting the likes of Bumrah and Jofra Archer. That’s his strength, that’s what makes him special”.
The fundamental thing about that backlift, Bharucha says, is what it creates – “time and space”. The very facets batsmen yearn for but find difficult to attain against high-quality pace. “The very fear that his high backlift would make him late on the ball is counterintuitive. That bat swing actually creates time, in essence what most in the game refer to as playing late”. As the bat goes back further he creates time and as it goes wider he creates space. This is his unique batting DNA”.
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Bharucha remembers the first time he saw a 13-year-old Sooryavanshi at trials. He noticed the walking gait first, then the way the bat was held.
“So, whose fan are you?” he asked. And without waiting: “Rishabh Pant?”
The denial came swiftly. “Nahi sir, Brian Lara.”
“I was taken aback. A 13-year-old kid in Bihar, growing up after Lara’s career ended, perhaps just seen him on YouTube.” Idolising Lara is one thing. But was there any imprint of the great batsman?
Sooryavanshi idolises Brian Lara, a player whose international career ended before he was born. (Reuters Photo)
Bharucha didn’t have to look hard. The moment Sooryavanshi lifted his bat to play the first ball, the high backlift brought a smile of recognition. “Sanju Samson’s backlift goes up high and almost past his head. Riyan Parag’s actually goes even further. Dhruv Jurel is somewhere in between, and Jaiswal’s can push up super high as well. It’s encouraged for them all. But no one comes close to Vaibhav in how the wrists snap back even further and at the same time go wider”.
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How far back? “See how far it goes? Past the vertical, and even further as the wrist cocks and snaps the bat back like a catapult. It goes past the front of his hands – almost 180 degrees. That is incredibly rare. I would say it shouldn’t even be possible to get into that position. But Vaibhav does it so naturally.”
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If the hands reminded Bharucha of Lara, the head reminded him of Sachin Tendulkar.
“Watch his head carefully at the crease as he awaits the bowler. It’s over his toes almost, and resultantly outside off stump even, depending on where he stands.” The cricketing purists see it as the head falling. That’s the framework of convention.
“If you understand that the bottom and top half of the body operate independently of each other, then you will know that the head can be completely bent over and you can still let the feet go straight forward at the ball. “I would say let the head fall for every batsman like Vaibhav,” Bharucha says.
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The bend of the back that creates that head position is an enabler. “The ball is never aligned outside the eyeline for him, it’s almost always inside his eyeline as he goes seeking the ball. It’s why he can smash balls on the off-stump line to the leg side if needed. It enables him to move towards the ball, naturally.”
Then Bharucha says something about Tendulkar that stops you. “Pull out videos and photos of young Sachin Tendulkar. Watch his head. It was over his front foot, outside off stump in his stance itself. As a result, a young Tendulkar never had the LBW issue. Only later, when he changed to a more upright, erect stance — due to back issues, perhaps — did the LBWs start coming.”
Sooryavanshi’s head position reminded Bharucha of Tendulkar. (Express Archive Photo)
The comparison is not casual. It is diagnostic. The same head position that the textbooks would flag as a flaw is the thing that kept the greatest batsman in history immune to LBW for the first half of his career.
What’s left after the hands and the head? The feet. “The back foot has to move forward naturally to hold the balance and move into the ball. It’s when that back foot doesn’t move that the ‘falling head’ becomes an issue. Like young Tendulkar, Vaibhav’s back foot moves in sync. And so he is in a perfect position.”
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“There is a bit of Rahul Dravid too in Vaibhav’s technique,” Bharucha says.
“You remember that little flick of wrist, the snap, the movement Dravid would do to bring his bat down in line of the stumps?” Once the bat had reached its zenith in the backlift, Dravid would snap it back into line with that wrist motion — especially when the ball was on the stumps. “Vaibhav does it from a similar wider angle but the difference is in not having any bend of his elbows at contact, which gives him twice the power than Rahul, but that imprint too is there.”
It is that facet with which Sooryavanshi is tackling the one area of challenge bowlers have begun probing. Anything on length or back of length, he shreds with fierce bat speed. If it’s full in the slot, he dismisses it with a wave of the hands. The ball to trouble him is the one, swinging in. Not necessarily full, but in line of the stumps, swinging into him.
He gets that Dravid-like snap of the wrist, gets the bat down quickly to jab it out. But Bharucha says it’s a work in progress. “Right now, when he does it, the bat still faces say mid-off. And hence you get that impression of jabbing and stabbing. We are working on getting the hands towards the umpire — straighter. This would allow him to use that forward head position seamlessly to start using the wrists more and drive straighter, or more importantly flick it wide of midwicket or to square-leg.”
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The ball to trouble Sooryavansho for now is the one, swinging in. Not necessarily full, but in line of the stumps, swinging into him. (BCCI/Creimas Photo)
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Against Chennai Super Kings, the left-arm seamer Khaleel Ahmed got it to swing in with his first delivery in the second over, pinging Vaibhav’s back thigh. Next morning, Bharucha asked: What happened on that ball? And was told that since the ball didn’t swing the previous over, he was surprised by this delivery.
Bharucha gushes. “The boy is very aware of his game. Such a sharp head.” A fifteen-year-old, beaten by a swinging delivery and explaining how the mistake came from a reading of the game, not from a lack of one.
The strength can pose challenges. “For that high backlift, the fierce wrist-cock snap, the wrist and elbow movement — everything has to sync up. It’s that sequencing that can at times go wrong.”
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Bharucha laughs, recounting how the street-smart Vaibhav feels it. He would say many a time that he felt like he was just not able to connect a ball at practice or would say things like the rhythm was just not there.
“I have discussed this with Rahul before, about his own batting, and he agreed that he was a batsman who had to hit a lot of balls to feel comfortable. Vaibhav too has that similarity.”
So there will be days when the rhythm goes. He will fall LBW or miscue a pull. “Don’t look at the images then and think the fault is in the falling head or the wrist snap or the angle of the downward swing. When a 150 kmph ball rushes at you, it can cause a mistake or two in anyone. But when suddenly the rhythm kicks in — when that sequencing all syncs up fluently — then it’s magic time.”
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Last year, Sooryavanshi tried to drag pull deliveries slanting across him and top-edged a couple. In the last six months, Bharucha has been working on his offside game. “He didn’t have that slash over point before. Now he has that. Next the punch through cover point will come. One thing shouldn’t be forgotten: he is just 15. This is the developmental years where a batsman hones his skills, firms up what he already has, and develops in other areas.”
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Jos Buttler, ahead of Gujarat Titans clash against RR, put it to a staff member of his former franchise simply: “Don’t get him too excited. He is the best player I have ever seen. Just fifteen. Imagine when he is twenty-one or twenty-five — the world at his feet. So good to watch.”
Then Buttler turned to Sooryavanshi directly. “Feeling good? Keep it up. That freedom. So good to watch.”
