Hitting Out, Surya Style!

After the fourth scrap against England on March 18 at the NaMo stadium in Ahmedabad, Suryakumar Yadav talked about butterflies — in the stomach of course. All this after going after England fast bowlers, Jofra Archer and Mark Wood in his first outing with the bat. He had dumped Archer over the square leg picket of the first ball he faced, and former England captain Michael Atherton likened the shot to West Indian Gordon Greenidge like; rocking on his right leg to play the horizontal bat shot. Atherton’s colleague in The Times, UK, Simon Wilde, described the first ball pull shot as Calypso-like.  Yadav is 30, has played for Mumbai in the BCCI tournaments for 12 years. After the early promise, he appeared to have lost focus, but suddenly his adrenaline soared to positive levels, seen as he was in thundering form in IPL Season-2018 (512 runs), IPL-2019 (424 runs) and IPL-2020 (480 runs). He was picked in the India Twenty20 squad based on the runs he amassed in the IPL and he was in cracking form in his first hit in the national colours. “The passion for the game has kept me going. I knew my chance would come. And when it came, I grabbed it with both hands,” said Yadav.