Vaibhav Sooryavanshi doesn’t possess a pronounced front-foot game. His coach Zubin Bharucha dismisses the percentages altogether. “Zero. He actually doesn’t have any front foot game,” Bharucha says. It is an apparent weakness. The inability to consistently drive the ball along the ground to deep cover or long-on may be a glaring flaw on any batter’s profile. Not for Sooryavanshi. His record-breaking, six-hitting avatar rests on that very contradiction.
On Wednesday in Chandigarh, Sooryavanshi began the Eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad needing seven sixes to overtake Chris Gayle’s tally of 59 from the 2012 IPL season. He got there in 15 balls. Pat Cummins had conceded four by then. Eshan Malinga and Sakib Hussain were taken apart just as quickly. A 14-year-old record was erased by a 15-year-old in under 20 minutes.
The sixes count raced to 12 within 27 balls – equalling his own Indian record for the highest maximums in an innings, against the same opposition, within a month – before Sooryavanshi fell for 97 off 29 deliveries, agonisingly short of Gayle’s record for the fastest IPL century – 30 balls. Sadness, unfamiliar on his face, blanketed him as he trudged back.
Sooryavanshi – all 65 sixes pitch map (Cricket-21)
He has brutalised the leg side all season, distorted the lengths of the league’s best bowlers, and maximised the powerplay like few before him. There is a method to it, one that bowling groups are scrambling to decode and plot against in real time.
The numbers tie his hang-back technique to the sixes story. Over 76 percent of his 680 runs this season have come off pacers. The powerplay alone has fetched him 490 runs – the highest ever by any batter in a single IPL season. His 65 sixes make up 58 percent of his total runs. Only two bowlers have delivered more than an over without being hit for a six. Jasprit Bumrah leaked two in five deliveries, including a first-ball six in their maiden duel. Bhuvneshwar Kumar conceded two in nine, as did Kagiso Rabada.
The thread that binds all of them is the same. Shorter lengths, dispatched disdainfully. Fuller balls, buried under serious heat. When hard lengths are compressing swinging arcs across the league, Sooryavanshi strikes at 244 against pace in that band. There is seemingly no release – 12 sixes when full, 16 against length, 12 against back of length, 17 when banged short.
Sixes Bee-hive (Cricket-21)
Bharucha’s explanation makes the technique visible. “He is actually changing the entire dynamics of what length means because he doesn’t come forward. Even when the foot moves forward, his weight is always towards the back. Every ball becomes hittable for him: bowl full, and he’ll swing through the line, bowl short, and it becomes a length ball for him.” He adds: “With that huge backlift, he has got so much time on his hands that he cannot keep the bat down. So the faster the bowler bowls, the easier it is for him. You have to bowl some really special balls. You have to change the pace. You have to do all that sort of stuff to fox him.”
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Facing a higher percentage of short deliveries has allowed Sooryavanshi to unfurl a tenacious hook-pull range. Over half his 65 sixes have been powered between mid-wicket and fine-leg – 34 sixes in 80 balls. Straight deliveries in the stump channel are stubbed too: 21 sixes between long-on and off at a strike rate of 281. The phenomenon extends to every corner. With at least 15 scoring shots on every sector of the ground, his lowest strike rate is 194 in the cover region – still seven sixes in 53 balls. Even in the point region, his least productive six-hitting area with one six in 23 balls, the strike rate holds at 204.
Bowling groups have tried everything. The slower ball had partially disrupted him earlier this season. On Wednesday, he bided the extra second and cleared them over the ropes four times, including the record 60th six over wide long-off off his Bihar statemate Hussain. Irony has since forced the quicks to attempt deliberate full-tosses – a pace bowler’s last resort against a 15-year-old. They had subdued him to six runs in 17 balls with that approach before. In his 15th innings, after SRH served up six of them, he belted the first one over square leg.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi Sixes Wagon Wheel.
Gayle acknowledged the arrival of the “New Six machine” on social media. The Jamaican’s all-time record of 1056 T20 sixes across 17 years came at a rate of one every 9.5 balls. The Bihari phenom is already clearing them at nearly twice that rate, just 623 balls into his career.
Qualifier 2 on Friday. Unusual fields, broken plans, and a teenager bending the format to his will. Zero percent front-foot game. One hundred percent problem.
