His tendency to play most lengths from spinners off the back foot has brought him high control percentages but it can also get him into trouble
Karthik Krishnaswamy10-Oct-20251:35
Aakash Chopra: Sai Sudharsan would be ‘kicking himself’ for missing a hundred
It would come as no surprise to anyone that Shubman Gill and KL Rahul, who ended the recent tour of England with averages of 75.40 and 53.20, also had the best control percentages of all of India’s batters on the trip.Guess which India batter had the next-best control percentage? You’ve seen the headline of this piece, so no prizes for guessing, but would you, otherwise, have imagined it might have been B Sai Sudharsan, who scored all of 140 runs across six innings, at an average of 23.33? That too on a tour that brought so many other India batters so many runs?Depending on your philosophical leanings, you might conclude either that this fact shows us how unreliable averages are, or how unreliable control percentages are.If you followed that tour closely enough, you would have watched Sai Sudharsan play innings after innings of promising beginnings and puzzling endings. You would have watched him defend and leave good-length balls in the business area around the top of off stump with great assurance, playing close to his body at most times, and almost always having time for late adjustments. You would have watched him get out to the most unthreatening deliveries, with half-volleys angling down leg proving particularly hazardous.At the end of it all, you might have wondered what to make of it all.Selectors and coaches often place great emphasis on the eye test. Sai Sudharsan had clearly passed this when India called him up to their Test squad. He averaged less than 40 in first-class cricket, and the last frontline batter to make a Test debut for India without having passed that benchmark was another Tamil Nadu left-hander, WV Raman, all the way back in 1988. And Raman’s first-class average was partly a function of his having begun his career as a left-arm spinner who batted down the order.At the end of that England tour, the enigma of Sai Sudharsan confronted the world all over again: eye test passed, average of 23.33.He had, of course, only played three Tests, so you couldn’t read too much into that average. But then came Ahmedabad last week, and a score of 7 when the rest of India’s top six made 36, 100, 50, 125 and 104*. One of those scores came from a promising wicketkeeper-batter who was playing because India’s regular keeper-batter was injured; many viewers began having visions of both playing together, one of them as a specialist batter.And how would India possibly accommodate both in their XI? Well, there’s this guy at No. 3 with an average of 21.00 after four Test matches…It was against this backdrop that Sai Sudharsan batted against West Indies in Delhi. On the one hand: day one on a flat Indian pitch, a modest attack, and so much to gain. On the other: refer to last week’s scorecard for evidence of how little all those ingredients can still amount to.As Sai Sudharsan settled into his innings, he showed no sign of being in any way conscious of this backdrop. He had faced a certain degree of criticism in Ahmedabad for his tendency of playing most lengths from spinners off the back foot, and had been out doing so, lbw while looking to pull Roston Chase off a ball that didn’t seem short enough to merit that response. He continued, here in Delhi, to play most lengths off the back foot against West Indies’ spin trio, but showed he had ways of forcing them for runs without adopting the horizontal bat.By the time he had scored 26, he had hit four back-foot fours off the spinners with a straight or straight-ish bat, three of them down the ground. Two of them were contenders for shot of the day: both times, he rocked back to Jomel Warrican’s left-arm spin and punched him against the turn into the narrow gap between mid-off and short extra-cover.Both times, the ball was only marginally short of a good length, and turning into his stumps and theoretically cramping Sai Sudharsan for room. But he manufactured just enough room by using the full depth of his crease and opening up his hip, with his front leg skipping nimbly to the leg side, and manufactured a remarkable amount of power through his strong, whippy wrists.Sai Sudharsan showed complete faith in this back-foot-dominant game against spin right through a second-wicket stand of 193 with Yashasvi Jaiswal, whether while playing attacking shots or while defending good-length balls attacking his stumps.Every now and again, this technique contributed to moments that jolted viewers out of the reverie that big first-day partnerships on flat Indian pitches can induce. One ball would turn a little more, or skid through a little quicker, or keep ever so slightly low, and yank Sai Sudharsan out of his bubble of self-possession. On 52, he jammed his bat down just in time to save himself from what looked like a certain lbw against one such ball from Khary Pierre.B Sai Sudharsan is back-foot oriented against spin•AFP/Getty ImagesBut this was still a batter in full control. Almost literally. Until he was dropped on 58 – he closed his bat face too early against the medium-pace of Justin Greaves and popped a leading edge towards Warrican at short midwicket – off the 107th ball he faced, Sai Sudharsan hadn’t played a single false shot all innings.And his eventual dismissal on 87 came off the only false shot he played in 125 balls against spin.Inevitably, it was a good-length ball that Sai Sudharsan looked to defend off the back foot, except this ball from Warrican turned prodigiously and skidded onto his back pad before he could bring his bat down fully. Like the rest of his innings had done, like his dismissal in Ahmedabad had done, it fuelled debate over his method.Ball-by-ball data from Test matches in India since 2022 tells us that, on average, batters only negotiate around 14% of balls that spinners land in the 4-5m length band (the fuller side of the spinners’ good length) off the back foot. Sai Sudharsan, in this series, has gone back to just under 38% of balls pitching in that band.Is that… good or bad?Well, first of all, our reactions to technique tend to be informed by what we’re used to seeing. We’re used to watching batters defend balls off the front foot when spinners land on the fuller side of a good length. Any other response looks unusual, and to many viewers, suspect. And if you believe this, that belief is only strengthened when that unusual method contributes to a dismissal.Sai Sudharsan was out playing back to a ball most batters would have gone forward to. But he had employed the same technique until that point while achieving a 100% control rate over 124 balls against spin.B Sai Sudharsan seemingly misjudged the length and fell lbw to Roston Chase in Ahmedabad•Associated PressWhat do we conclude, then? We might want to listen to India batting coach Sitanshu Kotak, who provided a superbly nuanced take in his press conference at the end of the day’s play.”See, Sai, obviously, coming from Tamil Nadu, they play a lot on turning wickets. He’s pretty good against spin,” Kotak said. “I think his back-foot game, and some shots he plays on the back foot, not many players play, because a lot of balls which he negotiates on the back foot, most of the players would negotiate it on the front foot.”The only thing we talk about is, some of the very full balls also, sometimes he plays on the back foot, so we’re trying to cut [down] on that. He very much knows that, and he tries. And obviously the line [matters]; if the line is outside off stump, the same length he could easily go [onto the] front foot and play, then impact [on the pad] would be outside off stump.”So all that we discuss. But his overall game against spin is a lot more on the back foot than front foot. And with his bat-swing, the way he bats, the amount of power he generates on the back foot is also amazing. Some of the shots through mid-off, extra-cover, through midwicket and all, that is his strength.”To boil that down: Sai Sudharsan is unusually back-foot oriented against spin, and he plays shots off the back foot – like the two mentioned above against Warrican – that not too many others can play. This method can, however, get him in trouble against certain lines and lengths, and judicious use of front-foot play can help him round out his game.Kotak’s observation about going on the front foot when the ball pitches outside off stump, to take lbw out of the equation, illuminates one advantage of front-foot play: it can keep the percentages in batters’ favour even when they aren’t in control. Defending off the back foot, however, tends to be more binary: you are usually either able to adjust to vagaries of turn, pace and bounce and defend with the middle of your bat, or the ball behaves so unusually that you are left without any protection against dismissal.Kotak spoke about Sai’s mental strength too, and the self-belief that allowed him to bat the way he did on Friday, seemingly impervious to all the noise swirling around him.India batting coach Sitanshu Kotak rates B Sai Sudharsan highly•PTI “Sai, we all know how talented he is. [We don’t always just] look at the [batter’s] score; [we] look at the batsman, how he’s batting, how he’s pacing his innings, what kind of shots he plays,” Kotak said. “Sometimes, one or two innings, anybody can fail. But he batted brilliantly today.”He is someone who is mentally very tough, you’ll never see him change his style of playing. He always plays on the merit [of the ball]. So the same way he batted today. [You might have thought] he might be thinking, [what happens] if I get out early again? But if you see his innings, [did] you ever feel from ball one that he’s thinking that? Obviously not. So that’s why we know [what a] quality [player] he is.”Sai Sudharsan’s innings reflected all the strengths Kotak enumerated, but also the security he feels in a team that believes fully in his ability, ignoring his first-class record, his early Test numbers, and the knee-jerk reactions of the outside world to success and failure. It was the innings of a hugely talented player but also the innings of the system that produced him and nurtures him.It felt sobering that this innings came against the West Indies team of 2025. Is Sai Sudharsan, in raw-material terms, a better batter than Tagenarine Chanderpaul or Alick Athanaze? Who can say. Do they have the infrastructure, technical expertise and support system that gets the most out of Sai Sudharsan’s talent? Most definitely not, and for no fault of theirs. If you think cricket is at its healthiest if it offers its young talent the best possible opportunities to flourish, you can’t be happy with the way it currently works.