When twilight set in, the beat of the drums quietened and the bowlers waited for stumps on an exactingly hot day at Anantapur, Sanju Samson embarked on his most testing battle of the day. The one with the self, the one that he had often lost. He had breezed to 80 off 70 balls without breaking much sweat. But with a century in sight, the tussle was no longer with the bowlers and conditions, but one with his own mind.
The temptation of a hundred must have teased, as it would for most batsmen. The dilemma would have winked in—should I wait for the next day and start all over again or should I just swing for glory? The vicinity of a milestone plays bizarre tricks on a sportsman’s thinking. But Sanju chose the path of patience.
Sensing the irresistible momentum he had worked himself into, India B sensed an opportunity and conceived traps. Spinners fed him with floaty invitations to clear the fence, fielders were stacked on the leg-side for leg-spinner Rahul Chahar, enticing him to play against the turn of his fizzing wrong ones. Part-time left-arm spinner Musheer Khan was introduced, from the corner of his eyes Sanju could see the vacant swathes on the leg-side. But his resolve remained unshaken. He contentedly knocked the ball around for singles to remain unbeaten on 89 off 83 balls, forming the spine of India D’s 305 for 5, on an afternoon wherein his colleagues frequently summoned the angel of self-destruction.
The conditions were not hellishly demanding. The odd ball seamed throughout the day. From the South End, the stray ball kept awkwardly low, Navdeep Saini teased with a concoction of hard length and brisk pace. The bounce was not frightening, the spin duet of Chahar and Washington Sundar barely purchased tormenting turn. Sanju, or any batsmen, only needed to put their heads down and wear the bowlers down. But he had witnessed the follies of his colleagues to take any favourable situation for granted. Devdutt Padikkal’s wild swipe went as far as wicket-keeper N Jagadeesan only; KS Bharat’s timid pull lobbed in the air, and most distressingly, Shreyas Iyer in retro floppy hat, sashayed down the tracked and miscued to mid-on. Even the usually sensible Ricky Bhui perished attempting an audacious stroke.
Self-destruction could be contagious. More so for Sanju, often prone to seizures of over-eagerness. For someone of his stroke-making gifts and technical purity, the haul of 10 first-class hundreds in 104 outings is outrageous underperformance. But in Anantapur, the dry afternoon breeze whistling past him, he displayed the traits that could leave the selectors impressed about his red-ball wares.
These days, impatience has defined him, as though he wanted to detonate the selectors’ door. But on Thursday, he batted with sparkling patience, with purposefulness and clarity of mind that had often eluded him. He didn’t preempt strokes, defended stoutly, left prudently and punished every boundary ball that came his way. He rarely stabbed at balls outside the off-stump, a signature of Padikkal’s streaky half-century. He rarely drove away from the body. He conformed steadfastly to all the basics that he had honed at the Medical College Ground in Thiruvananthapuram all those years ago.
A minute tweak in his trigger movement to ensure better balance against seamers worked. He pressed back, the back foot moved a trifle, and not overly across like Australian batsmen. Depending on the length, he moved further backwards or switched onto the front-foot. The movements were measured and precise, weight distribution exact. It helped him quell a probing Saini, who he on-drove gorgeously, a stroke of all dexterous hands, before upper-cutting him next ball. It woke the crowd from the afternoon slumber and the shock of Iyer’s dismissal.
If Iyer revisits his dismissal he would bang his head into the nearest wall. The surface was at its flattest when he arrived, the sun having dried up the early moisture. But it took just two wicked balls of Washington to spook him. One spat at him, more a case of him pushing his heavy hands at the ball. Another kept a trifle low. The next ball he faced, from the other end, he danced down the track, supposedly to ferry the ball onto the Bangalore Highway. He lost shape, couldn’t reach anywhere near to the pitch of the ball and his mind was too frigid to devise an escape route.
Contrastingly, Sanju was all soft hands and cool head against spinners. To the spinner, he eschewed the trigger movement and made a half front-foot press, before making the necessary adjustments. Chahar cleverly mixed his lengths and angles, which has been central to his prosperity in recent times. But he didn’t possess a ripping leg-break that would have made his wrong one deadlier. Sanju milked him for easy singles, before he clumped him for a six and later cut him past backward point for a four. Washington did not pose him any threat at all, and in the last hour of the final session, took him on with a mistimed four, followed by a brace of gorgeous sixes.
The assault cleared the decks for biggest battle of the day. The tussle with the self, which he won for a shot at his 11 first-class hundred on Friday morning, thus another small but significant step in his quest for Test match stripes.
