Suryakumar Yadav makes the impossible seem routine, yet again

Abu Dhabi, 2020. It is one of those sultry October evenings in the Middle East. It has cooled down a touch but the pressure of an IPL game between the Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers Bangalore makes the heat and the pressure unbearable.

RCB have put up 164 on the board and on a slightly sluggish surface, seem to have a decent shot at defending it. They then nip out Quinton de Kock in the powerplay. With Rohit Sharma not playing either, RCB’s chances seem to be increasing.

Well, until Suryakumar Yadav strides out to the middle. He gets into a bit of a staring contest with Virat Kohli during his innings but does not flinch. Suryakumar accesses every area possible on the field, creams his way to 79* and takes MI past the finish line.

The knock, because it has come against RCB, led by Kohli, who is also India's all-format captain, garners enormous attention. That Suryakumar managed to stave off whatever intimidation tactics RCB used, only illustrates how tough a character the lad from Mumbai is.

Once the game is won, Suryakumar signals to the dressing room, asking everyone why they were fussing over the early departure of de Kock and not to worry while he is out in the middle. A gesture not filled with expletives but the quiet confidence that he knew what he was doing, and that he knew only a handful (if at all) were better than him at that.

A couple of weeks later, MI win their fifth IPL title. Suryakumar, of course, has played a massive role. He has enhanced his individual reputation too, while casting MI as one of the best franchises to have ever existed.

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It is now 2023. Not even three years have passed since that evening in Abu Dhabi, but it seems a lifetime ago. That, though, is largely because Suryakumar has now become one of the greatest batters to have ever graced the shortest format.

His T20I numbers are unparalleled, and whenever Mumbai have needed him to stand up, he has done so. This season, he has already mustered three fifties, with all of them coming in run-chases. Two of those led to an MI win but all of those led to plenty of jaw-dropping from those in the stands and those watching at home.

The fixture on May 9, 2023 against RCB, though, is the one MI need to win to stay in playoffs contention. A loss will not eliminate them completely but it will make their route to the playoffs tougher. They end up conceding 199, which on most days, would be enough, especially with the bowling attack RCB have.

But on Tuesday, it is not nearly enough. Countless hours can be spent over how RCB left about 20 runs out in the middle and how they did not utilize the surface as well as they could have. The only reason for their defeat, though, was Suryakumar Yadav – much like he was three years ago in Abu Dhabi.

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Suryakumar Yadav makes heads turn with his display against RCB

Now that that entire narrative is established, let’s get into what Suryakumar truly accomplished at the Wankhede Stadium against RCB. Not only did he plunder 83 off 35 balls – a knock that included seven fours and six sixes, he reminded everyone why he currently sits on a pedestal that very few can even dream of getting to.

When the spinners came on, he swept them for fun. When fast bowlers tried to bang the ball in short, he was ready to upper cut it. And when it was full, he played cover drives and square drives as demonstrated in the conventional textbook of stroke-making.

The best part about it, however, was that at the start of his innings, Suryakumar just looked a little ginger when running between the wickets. Sunil Gavaskar, on broadcast, even mentioned that he was not running as quick as he would have liked.

Maybe he was fatigued or maybe he was carrying a niggle. Or, maybe, he just knew that there would come a phase not long from then when he would hit any and every ball for a boundary. As it turned out, he was right.

There is just something different about Suryakumar every time he walks out to bat. On Tuesday, he produced strokes that have become the envy of the cricketing world over the past couple of years. But whenever he lined up to face a ball, you felt that he was about to produce something special, or indulge in some shot that they had not seen yet.

Just when you, as a bowling team, think that you have worked him out, he does something even crazier and funkier – while giving off the vibe that this was something he had in his arsenal all along.

That is the sort of aura he carries now. It is known to almost everyone the areas he fancies but they cannot prevent it, especially when Suryakumar is in full flow.

RCB experienced that at the Wankhede Stadium. And it was not the first time it had happened either. In fact, he now has 425 runs against them in the IPL, averaging more than 35 and striking at more than 150.

Of course, the most high-profile of those runs came when Suryakumar was still waiting for his big break in international cricket, yet, was courageous enough to go eyeball-to-eyeball with Kohli.

If that innings captured the imagination, this knock just dared the cricket-watching folk to recalibrate what could qualify as imagination. It often made you ask what is humanly possible on a cricket field with a bat in hand.

For Suryakumar, it was just another day at the office. Just another day at the office. Those reiterations are enough to tell you what kind of cricketer he has become. And why someone of his ilk will not come around in a very, very long time.