Suyash Prabhudessai – a giant in the making

In a cricket-crazy nation like India, there is no dearth of experienced names that would sweep the audience away with overwhelming emotions. However, given the fact that the crowd loves the sport as a religion, it makes them appreciative of the young guns who punch heroically above their weight on any given days as a belief is manifested that in today’s seeds lies the tree of tomorrow.

It is not easy to make your debut in a cash-rich league when all the eyes are on you, hoping for you to strike the surface hard with countless others ready to grab the position at the mere mention of it. Imagine under such colossal cosh, a 24-year-old trying desperately to make a name for himself and his side has just lost the big three in quick succession, has a mountain to climb and right behind him is one of the most illustrious masterminds of the game, MS Dhoni.

We will come to this part a tad bit later as the first and foremost attention should be converged at an electric enterprise that this youngster managed to pull off, sending back one of the most daunting all-rounders in the shortest format of the sport. Add to that a handful of excellent showdowns on the field where he would just scamper around for miles to save every single run possible.

Maybe in the heightened contest of the willow and the leather, good fielding has gone under the wraps but the age-old cricketing adage still stands. It goes like this that every single run saved is equal to a run scored with the bat. More importantly, this is T20 cricket and the value of every single run is simply sky-high as the world has been conquered on the slenderest of margins.

Now coming to the point where Suyash suddenly found himself staring at one of the most unthinkable situations with the cream of the RCB batting skinned and it was on his shoulders that his team was willing to ride on a night where the stakes were extremely high. You know, the eyes of a cricketer speak volumes. You can say it by simply peeking into the eye that he is going to do something of immense value to the side.

Quoting Eminem’s “Lose yourself”, “He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready, To drop bombs”; that was how Suyash looked just before coming out to the middle. He was constantly in conversation with Dinesh Karthik to fathom the situation and know how to place his innings at the face of monstrous pressure.

There was a fire in his eyes and when he walked out to the middle, it never felt as if he was a debutant. Those turnstile wrists, the fearlessness brewing like the coffee’s densest froth and those exotic strokes left the Super Kings reeling from a position that did not give out a single hint of being under pressure.

Till the time he batted, not even one single miscued stroke came to the fore and it seemed that he was always in control of his innings until the mishap happened and his timbre was dislodged. With dejection dripping from his stance, it felt as if there was no end to this calamitous void that he was walking into, only to later realise that the world has taken notice. That was a knock which would insinuate an upcoming storm and would fill the hearts of the RCB fans with immense hope.

He was a major part of the turnaround that saw the Challengers propelling their total from 50 for 4 to a staggering 193 and in the forthcoming days, this knock would just be the beating of the introductory drums to announce the arrival of another talent of the posterity.