Is Sai Sudharsan ready for the big leap?

A little shimmy to the off, his stumps exposed to the fast bowler, and a cheeky paddle-scoop over the ’keeper or fine-leg, for four or six. That has been one of B. Sai Sudharsan’s more productive strokes in IPL 2025.

It’s a stroke that has also brought about his downfall. Against Royal Challengers Bengaluru in their first home game of the season on April 2, the left-hander’s attempt at shovelling a slower ball from Josh Hazlewood resulted merely in a bottom-edged loop that nestled in Jitesh Sharma’s gloves. It wasn’t a costly mistake; Sai Sudharsan’s 49 had taken his team to within 63 of the target of 170, which Jos Buttler and Sherfane Rutherford reeled in with a massive 13 deliveries to spare.

There wasn’t a similar happy ending in Mullanpur in Friday night’s Eliminator. The in-form Sai Sudharsan and his captain and opening partner, Shubman Gill, carried most of Gujarat Titans’ hopes after Mumbai Indians stacked up 228 for five in the winner-take-all knockout encounter, particularly with Buttler having flown the nest to link up with England for national duty. Gill was knocked over early, by Trent Boult, but Sai Sudharsan carried on manfully, elegantly, rapidly, like he had done all season. First with Kusal Mendis and then alongside Tamil Nadu buddy Washington Sundar, the 23-year-old kept the 2022 champions in the hunt, furrowed brows and resultant crease lines on the Mumbai Indians foreheads indicative of their mounting desperation.

Even when Washington was cleaned up by a peach of a yorker from Jasprit Bumrah, the Titans were on course, needing 78 from 38. Not regulation or straightforward, not by any stretch of the imagination, but there still was Sai Sudharsan, wasn’t he? The tournament’s leading scorer, having breezed past his sixth half-century (to go with an unbeaten hundred), sighting the ball superbly, willing it to go where he wanted it to, in total command even against Bumrah, if only defensively.

The Titans had reached 170 for three, 59 away from a place in Qualifier 2 with 27 deliveries to go and seven wickets in hand. Anyone’s game, really. Until Sai Sudharsan moved to his left, seeking to scoop season debutant Richard Gleeson over the fine-leg fielder who was inside the 30-yard circle. Having overcommitted to the stroke, Sai Sudharsan had no answer when the English right-arm quick bowled a full, quick ball that homed in on the base of the middle stump. As Sai Sudharsan missed, Gleeson hit, the unmistakable death rattle a body blow to the Titans, a death knell if ever there was one.

Sai Sudharsan trudged off, disconsolate, the thunderous wave of applause from a massive crowd that had been treated to subliminal batsmanship barely registering. He didn’t care that he had wowed on his way to 80 off 49, it mattered not one bit that he had amassed 759 runs in 15 innings at an extremely impressive strike-rate of 156.17. He had let his side down after doing all the hard work, he had failed to take them past the finish line. Sai Sudharsan almost knew that with him, the Titans’ last hope had disappeared even though there still was some firepower waiting to be unleashed. His worst fears came true a half-hour later when the five-time former champions completed a 20-run victory, ushering the Titans out of the tournament as they finished their otherwise impressive campaign with three crushing losses when it mattered the most.

Sai Sudharsan doesn’t have much time to mope and brood and wonder what might have been. After all, a Test tour of England awaits, and he can ill-afford, both from a personal and team perspective, to stay rooted in the past. A bigger, far more demanding and exciting challenge lies ahead of him as he prepares for life with the Indian Test squad for the first time. Already, one suspects, Sai Sudharsan’s focus will have shifted from the white Kookaburra to the dark red Dukes, England’s preferred weapon of destruction in their backyard.

At some stage over the next couple of months, potentially as early as June 20 and the first of five Tests at Headingley, Sai Sudharsan should receive his Test cap. The think-tank is currently playing it coy – the cards, facing inwards, are a millimetre away from the chest and one isn’t sure which of the numerous top-order batters will occupy what positions in the top four – and therefore it can’t be said with guaranteed assurance that Sai Sudharsan will line up in Leeds. But it will be a travesty if he doesn’t, given not just the mountain of runs he has stacked up in the IPL but also the manner in which he has gone about piecing them together.

The soft-spoken left-hander doesn’t have the most intimidating of first-class records; in an era where an average of 50 in domestic first-class cricket doesn’t really mean too much, he only tips the scales at 39.93 after 29 outings for Tamil Nadu and a host of other teams, including for India ‘A’ and, notably, for Surrey in the English County Championship for two summers.

Like Karun Nair, who has also county experience for Northamptonshire over the last two seasons, Sai Sudharsan turned to England to further his education, playing five Division 1 games for Surrey, including three in 2024. The last of them, against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge, yielded 105 and 28. That alone shouldn’t be the clincher, it goes without saying. But Sai Sudharsan has done enough either side of those innings to merit a place in the starting XI as India embark on the road to transition following the retirements of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.

Grand opportunity

Nearly three decades back, a classy left-handed Indian announced himself in Test cricket with a magnificent century on debut at Lord’s. Sourav Ganguly had spent four and a half years in the wilderness after first breaking into the Indian (one-day) set-up in Australia in 1991-92. Exactly 29 years ago on June 20 (the same date the Leeds Test will start), he became India’s Test cricketer No. 206, celebrating his long wait with a glorious 131 in the first innings, batting at No. 3, a slot that Sai Sudharsan is expected to occupy behind K.L. Rahul and Yashasvi Jaiswal. Without getting sucked into the comparison game, Sai Sudharsan has a grand opportunity to emulate the former captain though Ganguly himself will acknowledge that the younger left-hander from Chennai hasn’t quite shown the same discomfort thus far against the shorter ball like Ganguly did at various stages of his career.

Sai Sudharsan can’t afford to take his place for granted and from whatever one can glean, he is anyway not the sort to do so. By his own admission, he has plenty to learn but unlike an ‘A’ tour which can largely be classed as a learning experience, in the searing cauldron of Test cricket, he must learn on the job, so to say. A five-Test series is a huge examination of not just one’s skill and ability, but also mental fortitude and the ability to bounce back. It does afford the chance to recover from early setbacks, but it can also be unforgiving in exposing technical inadequacies, as Kohli found out in England in 2014 and again in Australia in what has become the final act of his extraordinary red-ball journey.

Alongside Gill and Jaiswal and Rishabh Pant, Sai Sudharsan forms the core group expected to take Indian Test batting forward. All these men are in their 20s – at 27, Pant is the oldest, the most experienced and the most successful to date – and will attempt to grow into their roles in the company of Rahul and Nair, both 33 but at different ends of the Test spectrum. The former, who made his Test debut in December 2014, is the most experienced of India’s specialist batters with 58 appearances while Nair has played a mere has played a mere six Tests, the last of them in March 2017 even though he had made a Test triple just three months previously. Even as he is trying to rediscover his Test chops, Nair must also, in the company Rahul and Pant and Ravindra Jadeja, carry the younger lot along. Sai Sudharsan is the second youngest of that younger lot, behind Jaiswal. He is aware that while he doesn’t have the luxury of bedding himself in, he is on the cusp of being accorded a rare privilege (an Indian Test cap) that has only previously been conferred on 316 men in more than nine decades since India first played a Test match.

There is little to suggest that, his middling first-class record (1,957 runs in 29 matches) notwithstanding, Sai Sudharsan will not hit the ground running in Test match cricket. He has the game to do so, orthodox and organised and effective and efficient, and he is high on confidence, both given his recent heroics and the fact that his captain at the Titans is also India’s new Test captain. He won’t look for preferential treatment because that’s not how the world of competitive sports works, but he will feed off his understanding with Gill, which translated to upwards of 900 runs as an opening pair in IPL 2025.

Sai Sudharsan will get at least one, most likely two, warm-up fixtures to hit his straps before the Test series, starting probably with a four-day unofficial ‘Test’ against England Lions starting in Northampton this Friday. It may or may not be an audition, depending on whether the team management has already firmed up its plans or whether it is looking for cues (India ‘A’ captain Abhimanyu Easwaran is also in the Test 18) before settling on personnel for the Leeds opener, but Sai Sudharsan will approach it as if his Test career depends on it. Perhaps it does, who knows. Among other things, Sai Sudharsan has already revealed his unflappability in the face of pressure, imaginary or otherwise. Why should it be any different now?