3 min readMar 23, 2026 05:54 PM IST
The Sai pair in Gujarat Titans—Sudharsan and Kishore—say they always talk deeply about the game. “It’s a weird relationship (between them),” Sai Kishore tells Gujarat Titans website. “We talk in detail about the game, the profession and other aspects of the game,” he adds. Sudharsan intervenes: “We don’t discuss the small stuff.” Sai Kishore takes on: “When we discuss it is always a deep conservation.” Sai Sudharsan chimes in: “When somebody listens, they wonder what the hell they are discussing!”
Both are from the same city, Chennai. Both are Tamil Nadu teammates and both share a warm bond. They traced the genesis of their game. Sai Kishore reminisces: “I actually took it very early. I studied in a proper academic school. I moved from that school to a proper cricketing school when I was in eighth standard.
“How cricket happened to me was actually a mystery,” says Sai Kishore. “I always wanted to get into IIT, become an engineer. Was always a school topper. Naturally, I took up engineering like everyone else does. And then….” he wraps that phase of his life in a cryptic smile. He rewinds further back. “Always loved cricket. When I was in eighth standard, I joined an academy near my house. I didn’t know that I had to rotate my arm and bowl, because I was bowling on the terrace. Tennis ball cricket and one-pitch games. If you hit straight on the wall, it is out and these kinds of rules.”
The first day at the academy he chucked the ball. “The coach said, you can’t bowl. They made me stand away for one week!” He says he felt embarrassed and tried fast bowling. Then India was playing a match and I copied Harbhajan Singh’s action. Then only did I realise that I had to rotate the arm and ball,” he says. Then he realised that his cricket was coming good and “the calling for engineering was not there.”
The batsman is quiet and reserved; the all-rounder is chatty and articulate.
The duo constantly give feedback to each other. “So many times he has given me feedback, and so many times I have given him. So that will definitely be there,” Sai Sudharsan says. Sai Kishore: “As a batter, he has a wonderful attention to detail, compared to most other batsmen. If you ask him what was different, he will go into the details, like your face was little…” he stops, to the stifled chuckles of Sai Sudharsan seated beside him on the couch. “It is too much detail,” Sai Sudharsan says.
Once, in a press conference, he gave a gist of Sai Kishore’s bowling virtues: “Off the field, the amount of effort he puts, the amount of preparation he does in terms of [gaining] tactical advantages… I feel that is taking him a bit ahead of other bowlers,” opined Sai Sudharsan. “He understands the game, the situations and uses his speeds and angles [well]. That’s why he is bowling the way he is.”
