There is no denying that Surya Kumar Yadav’s reign of terror in the T20I format is sensational but what’s even more dazzling is the wide range of shots that he possesses, which is incredibly rare among solid batsmen. His knock against England in England just cemented his status among the top hitters in the world of T20 cricket. Still, his recent knock of 111 runs off 51 deliveries against New Zealand further secured his position as a T20 specialist. In order to get a deeper insight into his innings, we shall have a look at his innings from a more analytical perspective.
Balls-wise Innings Progression
SKY is known to be a batsman who never takes his time to settle down and starts on an aggressive note. He is always known to pace his innings beautifully and it was nothing different this time. He started his innings at a strike rate of 110 in the first 10 balls and then skyrocketed to 210 in the next 10 balls.
He slowed down against the leg spinner but still struck at an impressive 160. But after his first 30 deliveries, SKY went berserk. He consumed lesser dot balls and his strike rate started to increase exponentially. His last 11 balls accounted for 39 runs with 8 boundaries coming off it. This conversion rate is something he does on a regular basis but he just takes it one step above in this innings.
He has scored runs across all the regions consistently with (47.2 %) of his runs in the leg side region and the remaining in the off side. In the over against Ferguson, he primarily targeted the offside region due to his offside bowling, but apart from that, a majority of the runs have been scored in the leg side and behind the square region. His ability to run between the wickets and convert the ones to twos and threes is an added bonus to his skillset. This is also seen through his runs in the leg side region which was considered a slightly long boundary.
Pitch Map Analysis
Here, about 92.4% of the deliveries bowled to him were between the full length and back of length region. We can clearly see that SKY had faced a multitude of varieties with the line of the delivery and most of them were bowled at tight lengths, but he still managed to find the fence with pure timing. While he was slightly cautious with the good length deliveries outside the off stump, a slight error in the lengths was sent all the way into the crowd, since he had an astounding strike rate of 283 for those deliveries which were back of a length outside off stump and 277 for fuller length deliveries outside off stump. The lone yorker and bouncer bowled to him were also clobbered for a maximum.
Conclusion
It was just that day when everything SKY timed came off the meat and the bowlers’ plans turned into a fiasco. But the multi-faceted Surya Kumar Yadav just shows us time and time again that T20 cricket is not just about hitting boundaries regularly, but also the ability to rotate strike and never waste dot deliveries. We are just 40 innings into what has already been an illustrious T20I career and we will be fortunate to witness more of his mastery in the forthcoming future.
