CRICKET | Spotlight on Sai Sudharsan’s search for a big score

As India hurtled towards victory inside three days in the first Test against West Indies at Ahmedabad, B. Sai Sudharsan may have momentarily harboured conflicting emotions. While the comprehensive margin was a gratifying return to winning ways at home for the team, the left-hand batter from Tamil Nadu wouldn’t have minded a second crack with the willow in the game. As it turned out, West Indies was so inept with the bat even the second time around that it went down by an innings and 140 runs.

It left Sai Sudharsan with no opportunity to make amends for his first innings, where a score of seven was all he managed before being dismissed leg-before by Roston Chase’s off-spin. In an innings where everybody else got a start — he and Yashasvi Jaiswal were the only dismissed batters to not reach a half-century — the 23-year-old’s single-digit effort didn’t make for favourable reading against an attack that appeared innocuous for large parts.

When Jaiswal was dismissed on 36 against the run of play, the ideal foundation had been set for the No. 3 to amass a big score. It would have acted as a springboard for someone who is finding his footing in pristine whites after a tour of England that evoked mixed sentiments about his game.

But in the 25th over, he committed the fatal blunder of going back to a delivery that wasn’t all that short. As soon as the ball missed Sai Sudharsan’s swipe across the line and thudded into his left pad, umpire Richard Illingworth raised his index finger.

It means that the top-order batter’s returns after four Tests read 147 runs in seven innings, with just one half-century. In England, the youngster did predominantly display a sound defence, but never managed to capitalise on the unusually dry and benign surfaces on offer. That he was caught down the leg side for a duck in his very first innings of the series seemed to make him conscious against that ploy as the tour wore on.

If it was Karun Nair who was axed after the tour of the Old Blighty and not Sai Sudharsan despite similar returns, it is largely because the latter has age on his side. But with Devdutt Padikkal, 25, in the squad and awaiting his chance, the southpaw from Chennai will have to soon start pulling his weight in the playing eleven. The second Test at the Arun Jaitley Stadium from Friday provides an imminent opportunity.