It's a turbulent time for the human race. Even if we sidestep wars, geopolitics and growing inequality for a moment, temperatures in some Indian cities alone have risen beyond human endurance and are claiming lives in one state, only days after hundreds fell prey to storms in another. None of this slows down our destruction of nature. Part of this destruction feeds artificial intelligence, which is resulting in losses of jobs, creating more inequality and, much lower on the list of things to worry about, a whole lot of slop.
We must be thankful for sport in such times. While it also contributes to global warming, sport continues to be an endeavour to push the limits of human excellence. Yes, athletes use science and technology to prepare better, but under the bright lights it is human versus human, testing themselves against the elements, against tactics, pushing themselves to the limit of what's legal.
How fortunate we are then that this era of cricket has a prodigy of its own. We who grew up not knowing what it felt like to watch Sachin Tendulkar the boy take on men twice his age, facing a ball has the ability to kill. All we have is some grainy footage from the late '80s. That interview with Tom Alter is gold dust. For Bradman, we have literature. Viv might not even make this category.
We, the spoilt lot, are getting to watch Vaibhav Sooryavanshi in the streaming age, with riveting episodes dropping two-three times a week. We won't need to tell stories of him to the next generation, we could just show them the faces of Pat Cummins or Mitchell Starc after having tried everything against this boy less than half their age without success. There is no breather, no sighter, just six-hitting of the highest quality that has given him, at 15, arguably the greatest season anyone has ever had in the IPL: 680 (most runs), 242.85 (highest strike rate), 65 (most sixes in any season).
Are we truly appreciating the enormity of what we're witnessing? A small example of it is the incredulity in the voices of seasoned broadcasters who end up infantalising Sooryavanshi in interviews. It is, of course, not easy to get over that he is just 15, but he is also much more. Such a range of sixes has never been hit with such regularity against bowling of this pace. What Sooryavanshi is doing is beyond the wild fantasies we had at his age.
In the Eliminator in New Chandigarh, Sunrisers Hyderabad tried the ultimate desperate act: bowl yorkers from ball one. To no avail. Cummins tried every kind of funky field, but fielders didn't matter until Sooryavanshi attempted one shot where he said he played the field rather than the ball. It resulted in a top edge to deep third. Had he upper-cut or ramped it, he would have got a six, he said. It would have been his 13th to bring up a hundred off 29 balls.
The high back lift, the quick eye, the inexplicable balance for someone swinging so hard, the lean onto the off side, the coil of the torso, the split-second decision making, everything came together as it has been coming together all IPL, and in the Under-19 World Cup before that, and in the previous IPL. There is ability of course, more research will tell us about the unique natural attributes that make Sooryavanshi, but what we already know is that he has put in the proverbial 10,000 hours into his batting. He continues to put more hours into his training to be able to produce such gems. And he needs all that work because so much can go wrong with how deep and high his back lift is.
Technology of course played a role in the making of Sooryavanshi but in an unexpected way. It gave a boy in Samastipur, Bihar access to old videos of Brian Lara. Everything else is the human pursuit of excellence, and it's got even the most jaded cricket follower to tune into Rajasthan Royals' matches this season.
Every time Sooryavanshi bats, it feels like a chance to see what is humanly possible in our sport. He's already told Kevin Pietersen in an interview that he feels he can score 200 in a T20 innings. For a while against SRH, it seemed he might do it even before that full interview was released. It could be on Friday, in Qualifier 2 against Gujarat Titans. If not, we will hope RR qualify for the final on Sunday. We will then wait for the next time Sooryavanshi plays. To know how much he can achieve. He is, unironically, a reason to say: what a time to be alive, even if only when he is batting.