“He has to learn to deal with failures,” Ian Bishop screamed as Vaibhav Suryavanshi stood, hands on hip, in disappointment after getting dismissed for a zero against Mumbai Indians.
It was the swinging ball from Deepak Chahar that did the trick. The first ball had been fuller, an attempted yorker that he dug out to the off side. In the last game , his sensational hundred was ended by a yorker from Prasidh Krishna.
The next ball from Chahar was full, but not yorker length. But it started from outside leg stump and moved to outside off. Vaibhav went for the big leg side shot but the bat handle turned in his hands, and he couldn’t clear midon.
In the last game, seamers couldn’t get the ball to swing or seam, and kept hitting length or back of length. And he kept walloping them to the on side. On the two occasions, that angled the ball across him, he had topedged it to thirdman boundary.
While raving about his hundred, former India coach Ravi Shastri had asked for more time to make a proper judgement on Vaibhav.
” I would say just let him play a bit because it’s at that age, there’s bound to be failure as well. It’s how he handles failure, as people will come up with new things,” Shastri said on The ICC Review.
Shastri also noted how bowlers will use ‘short ball’ tactics against Suryavanshi in future.
“There’ll be lots of short stuff thrown at him the next time he comes out to bat because when you tonk someone’s first ball for six, then you show no mercy. Then you don’t care whether he’s 14 years old or 12 years old or 20 years old. The menu is the same that you dish out. So, he’ll have to get used to that and once we see him handling that then you can make a proper judgement.”
How he fares against the short balls, swinging deliveries and seaming balls will be keenly watched in the games to come.
