It is normal for a teenager to play the bowler and not the ball, but Vaibhav Suryavanshi doesn't care about who he is facing, his Rajasthan Royals teammate Dhruv Jurel said. The 15-year-old has cared little for reputation all through this IPL, whether it is having a go at Jasprit Bumrah or more recently at Pat Cummins. The list of champion bowlers who have been at the receiving end of Sooryavanshi's onslaught includes Mohammed Siraj, Josh Hazlewood, and Kagiso Rabada.
On Wednesday, he made Cummins, a multiple-time World Cup winner and among the shrewdest operators in the game, look clueless with his barrage of sixes.
Cummins tried to curtail his free-flowing bat swing by bowling full into the leg-stump, but Suryavanshi made instant adjustments to dispatch the ball over the Australian's head. The subsequent short ball was slashed over third man, while the next delivery, a slower ball, was smoked down the ground. Cummins had run out of ideas in the third over.
Suryavanshi ended up with a match-winning 97 off 29 balls, just one hit away from breaking Chris Gayle's record for the fastest IPL hundred. Jurel, who has seen Sooryavanshi from close quarters, made his observations about the wonder kid.
"The best thing about Vaibhav that I have noticed is that he doesn't plan anything because he practices a lot, and he always backs himself. That's what he does every time he goes out and plays. The best thing about him is that he backs himself. He doesn't even have a shadow of doubt that 'I am not able to do it'."
Jurel, himself in top form with six fifties in the competition, mentioned another aspect of his younger colleague's batting that makes him one of a kind.
"When we go to an academy, (we're told) 'Don't watch the bowler, watch the ball. As 17-year-olds, we always watch the bowler (and think) he's a big name. But really, he just watches the ball. That's all. His mantra is 'I don't give a damn about any bowler'."
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