India vs Netherlands in T2O WC: A Suryakumar symphony in Sydney

This is exactly the kind of game the fancied team both looks forward to and dreads. Up against a literal no-hoper, the favourite has nothing to gain and everything to lose, especially in a format like T20 which, more than any other variant, offers a more even and level-playing field.

India found themselves in a predicament of this nature in their T20 World Cup Super 12 game against the Netherlands on Thursday (October 27). After all, not only are they the most followed and adored side in the world, they are also the occupants of the No. 1 T20 ranking. Up against them at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) were minnows Netherlands, a country renowned for hockey and football and swimming, and ranked a lowly No. 17 in the world, behind even Nepal. If India won, so what? They were expected to win in any case. Any slip-up, and the knives would be out.

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This T20 World Cup has already seen its fair share of upsets. Sri Lanka were stunned in the opening game of the first phase by Namibia, two-time champions West Indies lost to Scotland and Ireland and failed to advance to the Super 12s. In the Super 12s, Ireland stunned England, one of the red-hot favourites, by five runs in a rain-hit match at the MCG on Wednesday – and Zimbabwe’s one-run shock of Pakistan came four hours after the India-Netherlands match ended. If the Netherlands fancied their chances of pulling off an upset of their own in their first tilt at the Indian windmills in T20Is, who could blame them?

That said, in their heart of hearts, the Dutch would have known that it would take a miracle and a half for them to come close to pulling the rug from under India’s feet. They would have dared to dream because that’s the license sport confers, but they would have also been aware that the dream could quickly unspool into a nightmare. Hand on heart, they will tell you that their biggest target was respectability in defeat.

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The 56-run margin of India’s victory indicates that the bigger boys ran rings around the upstarts, and that’s how things unravelled once India’s top order had negotiated a tricky phase when they were frustrated more by how the surface behaved than any great venom in the Netherlands bowling. Just minutes earlier, South Africa had thumped Bangladesh by 104 runs on the back of a Rilee Rossouw hundred on the same track, and even then, it was obvious that this wasn’t an ideal T20 surface. The ball was gripping on pitching, it was stopping a fraction, the two-paced nature of the deck inhibited free-spirited stroke-making.

India, with their avowed intention of taking the attack to the opposition from the word go, had to rein in the horses for the second straight game. In Melbourne on Sunday, against a gun Pakistani pace attack, they were forced to play second fiddle up front on a spicy deck with pace and bounce. Here, confronted with the exact opposites and against an attack with very little pace to speak of, they were forced to eschew bravado for common sense, though it was clear more than once that Rohit Sharma was on the verge of losing his cool.

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It needed a special innings from Suryakumar Yadav for India to get on the bike and speed away. The right-hander from Mumbai strode purposefully to the middle at the end of the 12th over at his captain’s dismissal, with the total reading 84 for a run rate of seven to the over. Suryakumar would have been well within his rights to take his time, seeing as how the pitch had behaved till then and thwarted the most aggressive designs of such accomplished ball-strikers as Rohit and Virat Kohli. Instead, Suryakumar did Suryakumar things. He walked across his stumps to whip the ball aerially behind square, bringing his supple wrists into play, with as much felicity as he drove through and over cover, his open stance allowing him to target areas of the ground that weren’t as accessible to Rohit and Kohli.

There’s something about batting with Suryakumar that frees up Kohli’s thinking. His uninhibited appreciation of Suryakumar’s glittering array of strokes and the regularity with which he unfurls them is a pointer to how much he enjoys being in the best seat in the house to partake of the entertainment. When Rohit was heaving and bashing and bludgeoning the ball, Kohli was largely becalmed, 19 off 21 when the skipper was dismissed. Suryakumar’s arrival immediately stoked his attacking instincts. Off the first ball after Rohit’s fall, he skipped down the track to smash left-arm spinner Tim Pringle back over his head for four, then backed off to allow his junior partner to hold centre stage.

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Suryakumar didn’t disappoint, much to Kohli’s delight. As if in appreciation, Kohli himself came into his own with spectacular strokes from his rapier-like willow. Around a flurry of boundaries, the two men in their early 30s ran Netherlands ragged on the park. As excellent as the Dutch were in the field, they found it hard to keep a check on the electric running between the wickets as the pair piled on the pressure, and the runs, having added 95 when they ran out of time.

Since Suryakumar’s debut in March last year, he and Kohli have now batted 12 times together in T20Is. Those 12 innings have produced 551 runs, two stands in excess of hundred, and two other partnerships between 50 and 99, at an average of 61.22. Generally, it’s the two openers or an opener and a No. 3 who enjoy such spectacular returns as a T20 pair. That it’s the No. 3 and the No. 4 who boast such numbers is tribute to their versatility and chemistry, as much as it is a reflection of the lack of consistency of the openers which has allowed the next two batsmen in the line-up to bat for long periods together.

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Suryakumar’s unbeaten 51 off 25 balls, brought up off the last ball of the innings with the only six of his essay, was by a distance the knock of the innings, oozing class and style and flamboyance and innovativeness. Match-eve, the Dutch had spent more time discussing how to stop ‘SKY’ than how to keep Rohit and Kohli in check. “I shall take that as a compliment,” Suryakumar said by way of thanksgiving. You sure must, Surya. The SKY, after all, is the limit.