Sai Sudharsan — the perfect sync between consistency and authority Premium

Indian Premier League Season of 20-something left-handers led by B. Sai Sudharsan in a gripping run-making battle.

It might still be early days, but this edition of the Indian Premier League is already fast becoming the Season of the 20-something left-handers.

Ahead of double-header Sunday (April 13), a 29-year-old from Trinidad & Tobago (Nicholas Pooran) helmed the run-making charts while a 20-year-old from Khost in Afghanistan (Noor Ahmad) wore the Purple Cap. Two of the three hundreds of Season 18 have come from the scything willows of 24-year-olds (Priyansh Arya and, famously on Saturday night, Abhishek Sharma), the third from a 26-year-old seasoned campaigner on the international comeback trail (Ishan Kishan). Left certainly has been overwhelmingly right.

Add to this flamboyant bunch – and make no mistake, this is a largely flamboyant bunch of batters to whom hitting sixes is second nature, complemented by a left-arm wrist-spinner who, even if he wanted to be, couldn’t be anything but flamboyant – a quiet, understated rangy 23-year-old left-hander from Chennai who cries out for attention not with flashy earrings and outlandish gestures but with the simplicity of his  strokeplay, at once effortless and breathtaking.

Answering to the name of B. Sai Sudharsan, the Gujarat Titans opener is engaged in a gripping battle with Pooran for the race to the Orange Cap. The symbol of supremacy when it comes to run-making in the IPL has changed hands more than once and is currently in the possession of the Caribbean charmer. But while the Orange Cap will be a welcome addition to his kitbag, Sudharsan’s primary focus is not on the slice of individual glory. The larger cause, team success, resonates with him; he was part of the squad (but not the XI) that won its maiden final on debut in 2022, top-scored with 96 in the last-ball loss to Chennai Super Kings in the title clash 12 months later and has been one of their more consistent performers in the last four seasons. Now armed with a maturity that goes well beyond his biological age, it sets him up as potentially one for the future from a leadership perspective too.

Pooran and Sudharsan have been engaged in a fabulous battle of nip-and-tuck in the race for top run-making honours. The far more explosive Trinidadian leads the way with 349 runs from six innings at an average and a strike-rate superior to Sudharsan. Where the latter averages 54.83 and strikes at 151.61 per 100 runs scored (he has 329 runs, also from six innings), Pooran’s  corresponding numbers are 69.80 and 215.43 respectively. The older batter has smashed 31 sixes (just one fewer than Chennai Super Kings’ entire team tally at the conclusion of their sixth game) to Sudharsan’s 13 but then again, this isn’t a battle between  Pooran and Sudharsan, this isn’t a comparison of who is more valuable to their team.

For starters, Pooran strides out at No. 3, behind the aggressive opening pair of Mitchell Marsh and Aiden  Markram, with Lucknow Super Giants packing most of their explosive power in the top half of their batting order. New skipper Rishabh Pant has yet to catch fire but behind Pooran, there is no shortage of batting muscle – Ayush Badoni, David Miller, Abdul Samad. This is a fearsome group of ball-strikers in a tournament where every team, with the exception of CSK, seems to have assiduously assembled fearsome groups of ball-strikers.

Gujarat Titans aren’t an exception, by any stretch of the imagination. On paper, they might not appear to possess the same depth when it comes to scoring rapidly but of their six batters who have faced at least 30 balls this season, skipper Shubman Gill’s strike rate of 149.64 is the least. One would think that in a line-up that, Gill apart, boasts Jos Buttler,  Sherfane Rutherford and Shahrukh Khan, Sudharsan would be the fulcrum around whom the rest would operate. But astonishingly, for want of a better word, it is the Tamil Nadu left-hander who tops the boundary-hitting charts for his franchise, with 31 fours and 13 sixes from 217 deliveries faced.