The Sooryavanshi effect: even Bumrah is thinking, ‘don’t get it wrong’

Getting your bowling plans right against Yashasvi Jaiswal and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi when they are in the mood is tough. Even Jasprit Bumrah found it tricky on Tuesday in Guwahati. Even Jasprit Bumrah.

“Yeah, I think we had some plans, but I don’t think, being honest, that we ever executed those plans the way we wanted,” Mahela Jayawardene, the Mumbai Indians (MI) coach, said after going down to Rajasthan Royals (RR) in their IPL 2026 game.

“The margins are very small,” Jayawardene said at the press conference after the game. “The guys are batting really well. We knew the danger especially when the rain [curtailed the game to 11 over per side] and you have the license to go up front. So we needed to make sure that first four, five overs were crucial for us. I thought we pulled very well to get back from the start that they had and yeah, I think we missed our lengths, we missed our lines, and they played really, really well.”

Asked to bat first, RR got 22 from the first over, bowled by Deepak Chahar, and were 80 for 1 after five. Jayawardene made a fair point that MI pulled things back – only 52 runs were scored between overs six and ten, and 18 off the last one – but the damage done early on was too much for MI to make up for.

Though Jaiswal was the star of the RR batting show, with 77 not out in 32 balls, the damage was equally down to Sooryavanshi’s knock. He hit 39 in 14 balls. In fact, Dale Steyn suggested that bowlers – even the best in the game, like Bumrah – might be getting muddled in the head when up against Sooryavanshi.

“I think that’s what he’s done. I mean, honestly, he’s created and instilled the fear into bowlers that he’s going to hit you for boundaries,” Steyn said on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut show, speaking specifically about Bumrah’s first ball to Sooryavanshi, which went over mid-on. “That delivery from Bumrah. That’s in the slot. That’s so rare of Bumrah. So even the great Bumrah is thinking in the back of his mind: ‘don’t get it wrong; because if I get it wrong, this guy’s going to hit me for six’.”

Which is exactly what Sooryavanshi has been doing. In fact, you don’t even have to get it too wrong for him to do what he does.

“I feel, if you think like that, more often than not, you do get it wrong,” Steyn said of the mindset of the bowlers. “You can see even when he’s hit him for six, he [Bumrah] almost started to laugh afterwards and then go, ‘I knew that was going to happen if I got it wrong’. And that’s exactly what happened.

“And this kid’s not scared, man. If you miss a half-volley, he’s going to hit you out of the ground. So drag your length back and hit a good length and you might be on the money with him. Miss and you’re traveling the distance. It doesn’t matter who you are, Bumrah or Joe Average. You know, so that’s fantastic batting.”

Aaron Finch, speaking on the same programme, wondered what Bumrah’s plan to Sooryavanshi was.

“I think he’s looking for an inswinging yorker first ball. Vaibhav’s obviously got a big, high back lift. He’s got fast hands, but with that high back lift, means you can be vulnerable to a good fast yorker first up,” Finch said. “So I think that he’s gone for that. And he just mis-executed, can happen.

“But it’s amazing the effect that your mind has on your skill level, doesn’t it? Because if you’re thinking, ‘oh, don’t miss in the slot’, what do you do? You miss in the slot. Because that’s what your body is thinking about. Your body doesn’t understand the word ‘don’t’. So yeah, right – slot… You’re worried about missing rather than when Bumrah, when he’s at the top of his game, he stands at the top of the mark, and he says, ‘right, this is what I’m going to execute, and done’. More often than [not], he does it.”

As such, 123 for 9, which is what MI put up in response to RR’s 150 for 3, wasn’t a bad effort for an 11-overs-a-side contest. But RR kept picking up wickets. The best partnership for MI was 47, put up for the sixth wicket, and they were hardly in the running for the chase by then.

“I think if a team batting first gets a score, I think you can get that as well. I think we have the capability, we have the batsmen to do it,” Jayawardene said. “We just needed a couple of partnerships. [We] lost a few early wickets and we lost momentum. If you look at the end, it was, what, four sixes was the difference [27 runs]. So it was four hits for us. And we just couldn’t find that. And that’s without us getting into a rhythm and maybe one or two batsmen, really, getting a quick 30 or a 40 in that top.

“I don’t think it was that we thought that it was out of our reach. It was about us getting a good start or a couple of the partnerships going deeper.”