Can Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s monstrous six-hitting ways be restricted? Do bowlers have a way to stop his onslaught by aiming at his body?
England fast bowler Jofra Archer cheekily refused to divulge his bowling plans against the wonder kid after teammate Sooryavanshi’s 97 off 29 balls booked Rajasthan Royals a place in Qualifier 2.
During the post-match interview, Archer was asked if he had discovered a secret formula to stop Sooryavanshi while bowling in the nets.
Archer, with a wry smile, said that he would reveal his plans against Sooryavanshi “after the IPL ends”.
“The more runs he scores, the more runs we have to defend. So he can go on and get 150, it’s good for the boys when he scores a lot of runs,” Archer said.
The common refrain is to avoid his hitting arc by bowling tight lines on the back of the length and allowing him little room to chance his arms.
Former England pacer Steve Finn jokingly said it was better to pretend to be injured than bowling to the 15-year-old.
“Probably pull a calf or a hamstring or something before your captain asks you
to bowl,” Finn quipped on the ‘For the Love of Cricket’ podcast.
“It looks incredibly hard, doesn’t it? Even just watching the videos of him training in the nets against Jofra Archer, who is trying everything. Full and wide, short, full
and straight... and all of them were going to the boundary,” Finn said.
He suggested that keeping a tight line and then catching Sooryavanshi by surprise could be a method of getting him out.
“When someone likes to play as free-flowing as he does, you’d think a few in and around the tight line and the back of the length, or over the top of the stumps, try to protect the leg-side to begin with,” Finn said.
“And then if you could throw in like a full, slow, wide one and make him reach for it on the back of three or four tight deliveries, you could catch him off guard,” he added.
“At the moment it seems to be pot luck as to whether you get him or not,” Finn said.
Former India pacer Tinu Yohannan thinks pace and bounce can unsettle the
young kid.
“Quick, steep bounce can undo Vaibhav. That way, he is lucky he will not have to face Jofra Archer, who’s quite capable of executing that. But if people like (Kagiso) Rabada and Siraj can stick to their basics without experimenting, that too could make his
job harder. Rising deliveries will test him,” Yohannan told The Telegraph.
“You also need to focus on hitting that 6 to 8-metre mark on the off stump, place a backward point and deep third man and make him take a risk. Let him try the area over square leg. Trying to get the ball back into him is another option, which surprisingly hardly any of the bowlers looked to do. Bumrah could have done that, but somehow it didn’t happen,” said Yohannan.
Harbhajan Singh had a more concrete strategy. “Against Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, my plan would be to get his wicket anyhow. But what kind of form he is in matters a lot. My plan would be to spin the ball and keep it away from his hitting arc,” Harbhajan said on JioHotstar.
“If he steps out of the crease and tries to hit me, that’s okay. But I don’t want him to play his shots while standing in the crease. That would be my bowling plan. But the kind of batter he is, at the age of 15, he is hitting every bowler for a six... I have dismissed Chris Gayle many times, but Sooryavanshi is at a different level altogether. His bat flow is something I have never seen.”
Yohannan agreed with Harbhajan.
“A good off or leg-break bowler can also be a handful against him. Since he is basically a leg-side player, turning the ball away from him and keeping it a bit slow could work, especially because of his bat speed and bat swing. But we haven’t seen quality off-spin in this IPL... Barring Narine to an extent,” the former pacer said.
No wonder the famed Titans’ bowling quintet have a tough task on hand.
