Pat Cummins was torn apart by 15-year-old Indian prodigy Vaibhav Suryavanshi as the Rajasthan Royals eliminated the Sunrisers Hyderabad from the finals of the Indian Premier League.
Batting first, Suryavanshi hammered 97 from a mere 29 balls with 12 sixes. Thirty-one of his runs came from Cummins, who was left with the ugly figures of 0-64 from his four overs.
Cummins went into the game with a plan to try to keep Suryavanshi quiet with yorkers, but after the left-hander navigated the first couple, Cummins was unable to keep landing the ball in the blockhole and the sixes started to flow.
In all, Suryavanshi struck four of his 12 sixes from Cummins’ bowling, leaving the Sunrisers captain sounding somewhat stunned post-game. Earlier in the tournament, Cummins had lavished Suryavanshi with praise, calling him his “new favourite player”.
“Yeah, he played pretty well, don’t feel like you have too many options,” Cummins said after the match.
“Obviously, it’s a really good pitch, but the margins are so small you know. You miss your yorker by a little bit, he doesn’t tend to miss them. So yeah, fair play.”
The Rajasthan Royals, coached by Kumar Sangakkara, have seemingly struck the right balance in managing Suryavanshi, giving him plenty of room to practice and not filling his head with too many conflicting ideas.
“That’s the thing, we don’t have any conversations,” captain Riyan Parag said at the presentation. “Yeah just leave him alone, let him go and have fun. He likes batting like I’ve said before so we get him a lot of batting practice at the nets and stuff like that and then he goes out and does his thing.”
Cummins will now travel home for rest and pre-season work ahead of a gruelling Test calendar over the next 12 months, starting with two Tests against Bangladesh in northern Australia in August.
With the 12 sixes he struck overnight, Suryavanshi surpassed Chris Gayle’s 14-year-old record for the most sixes in a single IPL tournament, with 65 to Gayle’s 59. Suryavanshi has done it in just 266 balls, whereas Gayle took 456.
“I haven’t seen him do too many interviews at games, either pre- or post-match, unless he’s won an award,” Aaron Finch said earlier in the tournament.
“So I haven’t seen him exposed too much in that regard, and that’s a huge tick to the Royals for really managing him well and almost treating him like a kid up to a point. But the hype is real with him, he’s a seriously good player.”
The Sunrisers have themselves been known for high scoring under Cummins’ captaincy, but their chase for a distant 244 was wrecked by England’s Jofra Archer.
Bowling at high pace, Archer clean bowled Cummins’ Test deputy Travis Head on the way to figures of 3-58 – not much less expensive than Cummins, but much more effective.
Archer, meanwhile, predicted Suryavanshi would soon score 150-plus in an T20 innings.
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Daniel Brettig is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X.