Batbricks7

After two ducks against Sri Lanka and a slow start to the series, Sanju Samson was perhaps in the last-chance saloon yet he responded with an astonishing century worthy of his talent by being ruthless, bold and calm

A gravelly voice in Malayalam stopped Sanju Samson when he was boarding the bus after the last day of the Duleep Trophy fixture in Anantapur.

He turned back and met a request that sounded more like a demand “Kalakkane mone.”

Translated as, “make a splash, son.” Sanju reciprocated with a wistful smile and a thumbs up. He entered the bus and muttered to a support staff member “Ivdem Malayali!” A Malayali here too, in the dead of rural Andhra Pradesh.

The fan had biked some 500km from Hyderabad to watch Sanju bat, capturing the burden of being an international cricketer from a cricket-starved corner of India’s domestic field.

For nine years, since his debut in Harare, Sanju has been the brightest cricket hope for an excessively emotional fanbase in his state, Kerala.

They have celebrated even half a good knock of his, they have mourned every half a failure of his, they have read paragraphs between the lines when he was ignored.

Had his chances dwindled, the strike-savvy state would have staged a dharna in front of the secretariat, the rendezvous for strike-artistes in Thiruvananthapuram, twenty-odd kilometres from his house. Sanju himself might have felt the interminable weight of his badgering fans, who he would advise to stay calm and wait.

So repetitive was he that some wondered whether the calm was but a veneer to hide a ruffled mind like the perilous eventide waves in his hometown beach.

Coming-of-age innings
The time finally came, in Hyderabad, when Sanju’s coming-of-age story finally came of age, like an old barrel of wine in the cellar maturing.

Perhaps, at a time when his name had made half its trudge to the recycle bin in the selector’s mind in this format.

Successive ducks in Sri Lanka and low scores this series (relatively that is) had put doubts whether his satin-smooth stroke-making gifts could manifest in runs, fifties, hundreds, game-changing ones, match-defining ones.

Perhaps, this was his last shred of rope, perhaps had he failed he could have been thrust to eternal wilderness.

He had scored a hundred in ODIs in South Africa. But that had seemed eons away. He needed a moment and he found one. Just before his ship hit the iceberg.

This was the perfect knock, when all the elements that make him such a wondrous cricketer blended in ideal proportions. When touch, freedom, vision, confidence and ruthlessness all stirred to produce one of the most destructive knocks in this format.

Arguably, he found a sense of direction and peace in the desperation and chaos around him.

Clarity from the team management helped, he admitted. “Three weeks before the series, I was fortunate to get a message from the leadership group.

Surya, Gautam bhai and Abhishek Nayar told me three weeks ago that I would be opening.

That gave me some kind of proper preparation,” he said. He hit the nets in the Rajasthan Royals academy, and returned, “10 per cent more mentally and physically ready in this series than any other series.”

This was a conquest of his mind rather than his game. He always had the range of strokes, the extra second to judge the length, the eye for the gap and the boundary.

All he perhaps lacked was that extra drop of daring, the realisation that he is better than he is, that his biggest letdown has been his mind only, the grains of self-doubt that has not spared even the best of batsmen.

A cover drive helped in setting the tone. It’s his pet shot, one that fills him with joy, soothes his nerves and sets the innings rolling.

Taskin Ahmed fed him one just outside the off-stump and Sanju purred it through cover. A faint smile spread over his face. The next ball he manufactured room and drove him on the rise through cover. This was the reflection of the extra boldness.

The assertion that he is not merely crease-bound, and that hereafter he would run the show, dictate bowlers when to bowl and where to, command the ball to spaces than he chooses. The next ball, he feigned to back away and foxed Taskin to bowl towards his pads, which he neatly flicked. Here was a batsman tearing apart bowlers psychologically.

He was akin to Kathakali artiste when assuming the roudra bhava, the rasa of violence, jinking around the crease with ferocious destructiveness. He has refined his movements. In the past, he was prone to over-balancing himself, he used to go suddenly blank and freeze.

Here, his movements were milli-metre precise. He didn’t use his deft hands to fish him out of trouble, because he ensured that he didn’t get himself into awkward positions in the first place.

Even the worldly-wise Mustafizur Rahman could only be reactive. He saw him glide leg-side. He bowled short. Sanju disdainfully pulled it. He went full, took off the pace, that fabled cutter. Sanju simply coaxed it over the bowler’s head. Mustafizur stood bemused.

A few balls later, he looked genuinely shattered, when Sanju ferried a short ball over extra-cover with not so much a drive as a punch. If the seasoned white-ball bowlers couldn’t stop him, what of the 22-year-old leg-spinner Rishad Hossain?

Sanju treated him for five successive sixes, the last few ones following almost apologetically from his bat.

At this juncture, Sanju’s sole intention seemed to be to enjoy himself. Even indulge in strokes that he would have confined to the nets alone, as that short-ball six. Off the 40th ball, he completed his hundred and celebrated with distilled content. He is not someone who sheds a lot of emotion.

His bat did display a spectrum of emotions. If only he had spotted the badgering fan from Hyderabad, he would have asked him. “Kalakiyille, chetta?” Haven’t I made a splash, brother?