Cramps, not a hamstring: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi cleared to face Punjab at Mullanpur
Rajasthan Royals batting coach Vikram Rathour has cleared up the question that has been sitting over Mullanpur since Saturday. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, the 15-year-old opener who walked off the Sawai Mansingh Stadium outfield with two members of the medical staff after his 36-ball 103 against Sunrisers Hyderabad, did not pull a hamstring. He cramped up. Sooryavanshi is fit, available, and likely to start when Rajasthan face the unbeaten Punjab Kings on Tuesday night.
The pictures from Saturday looked worse than that. Sooryavanshi had hit twelve sixes and five fours in his innings, dragged Rajasthan from a sluggish start to 228 for six, and then started limping in the field as Sunrisers chased the score down. He went off slowly, supported on either side, and the Royals' bench fell silent. By the time Ishan Kishan and Abhishek Sharma had finished knocking off the runs, the question was less about the result and more about whether the teenager had played his last innings of the season.
A heat problem, not a muscle one
Rathour's explanation is the boring one, which is usually the best kind in this part of an IPL season. Jaipur was hot. Sooryavanshi had spent the bulk of an innings batting in 40-degree heat, then padded up again on the field. The initial visuals suggested a hamstring strain. The physios looked at him after the game and the issue turned out to be acute cramping in his legs, with no sign of a tear. He has trained since.
The expectation in the Royals camp is that he plays at Mullanpur, although the team has left itself the option of using him as an Impact Player rather than starting him in the eleven. Rajasthan need the points either way. They sit fourth on 10 from eight, with a one-from-four record across their last four games, and a one-sided defeat to a Punjab side that has not lost yet would leave them in real trouble in the playoff race.
What is at stake at Mullanpur
For Punjab, this is about extending a record that almost nobody outside Mohali expected. Six wins, one washout, 13 points from seven matches, top of the table. Their batting has been the loudest part of the campaign, including the 265-run chase against Delhi Capitals that broke the highest successful T20 chase ever set, but it is the squad balance under Ricky Ponting and the captain that has made the run sustainable. They will face an opponent that, on its day, has more ceiling than almost any side in the tournament.
That ceiling is largely a function of Sooryavanshi himself. His Saturday hundred was the third-fastest in IPL history. He already has two sub-40-ball IPL centuries before his 16th birthday, the only player in the competition's history to manage that. He is the youngest cricketer to reach 1000 men's T20 runs. None of those numbers belong to a 15-year-old, and yet here we are.
The piece of the story Rathour has now closed is the simplest one. Sooryavanshi is fine. The legs are tired. The hamstring is intact. Punjab still have to bowl at him.
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