With Surya India is in safe hands

Rex Clementine in Rajkot

Rajkot may not be one of India’s leading cities, but it’s a significant one as it was here Mahathma Gandhi launched his independence movement and for anyone who visits the city Gandhi Museum, a ten minute drive from the airport, is a must.

Rajkot is in the state of Gujarat where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is from. The state of Gujarat has three First Class teams while Saurashtra is based in Rajkot, Baroda are formidable opponents while the team called Gujarat itself is based in Ahmedabad.

Leading Indian cricket centers like Calcutta and Bombay have hosted World Cup finals and you can be assured that none of those venues will host this year’s final as it is destined to go to Ahmedabad. Not only is Modi from Gujarat but cricket’s most powerful man Jay Shah is also from this state. Jay Shah is the son of Amit Shah, the number two of India’s ruling party BJP. And of course the newly built Ahmedabad stadium is named after the Indian PM. It’s also the world’s largest cricket stadium with an ability to host 110,000 spectators. This year’s World Cup final will be a fabulous experience. The only problem is Gujarat is a dry state.

Sri Lanka had arrived in Rajkot with the hopes of winning their first bilateral series in India. Across all three formats, Sri Lanka had never beaten India in a bilateral competition. But those hopes were dashed by Suryakumar Yadav, who raced to his third hundred destroying Dasun Shanaka’s expectations.

SKY or Surya as he’s popularly known has been in terrific form in the last six months. In that period he has scored three T-20 International hundreds with the other two coming at Trent Bridge against England and at Mount Maunganui    against New Zealand. It was the 12th fastest hundred in T-20 Internationals coming in 45 deliveries and the second fastest by an Indian. The fastest by an Indian too had come against Sri Lanka with Rohit Sharma smashing a hundred in 35 balls.

Surya is a late developer. People had known him because of his IPL exploits but he debuted for India after turning 30. Initially, his attitude was a problem, but like Virat Kohli his approach changed. He adopted a diet that would help his cricket sticking to food that would give him more suppleness and power.

What we see is his insane batting breaking all the norms falling over sending the ball to areas where fields can not be set. This is totally unconventional. His training methods are similarly bizarre. At the nets, if he gets out second ball, that’s it for him for the rest of the day. He wouldn’t want to bat again to get into a groove. It’s a kind of punishment for not executing the shot properly.

Not all the time Surya’s risk taking pays off. At times they backfire. Like it happened in Bombay where he was too early on the falling scoop and ended up offering a catch to short fine-leg off Chamika Karunaratne.

Surya has got that calmness in his life. He is not anxious and the fear of failure is not there. There’ll be somedays when things will work out and on other days he’ll look stupid. But more often than not he is pulling it off and the opposition is having nightmare for you can’t set a field for his stroke play.

India is under fire having failed to make it to the semis in back to back T-20 World Cups. New players like Surya are a threat to the established ones like Virat Kohli. India’s line-up for next year’s T-20 World Cup in US and Caribbean could be entirely different.