Sai Sudharsan: Inconsolable after being dropped from U19 team due to poor physical shape, to India Test debut
Jersey no.66. India's Test cap number 317. These belong to Sai Sudharsan now. The young Tamil Nadu cricketer could not stop his ear-to-ear grin a few minutes before the toss of the India vs England first Test at Headingley in Leeds on Friday. It started when Cheteshwar Pujara was asked to hand over the cap to him. Surely Sudharsan would have known at least a day before. But it's an unmatchable feeling when it finally happens.
Captain Shubman Gill, vice-captain Rishabh Pant, and pacer Mohammed Siraj took turns to congratulate Sudharsan and hug him. Pant, being Pant, decided to pull the youngster's cheek - he is now the big brother, of course. A few minutes later, captain Shubman Gill confirmed Sudharsan would bat at No.3.
The position belonged to Rahul Dravid, Cheteshwar Pujara and briefly to Gill. Big players, those. But Sudharsan's smile narrated a different story: the one bereft of worries, the one built on hard work, perseverance and belief, which had taken a huge hit not too long ago when he was a teenager.
Sudharsan was inconsolable after being dropped from the Tamil Nadu U19 team in December 2019. The reason? Poor physical shape. He himself knew that. He started working on his fitness with his mother, Usha Bharadwaj, a former volleyball player for Tamil Nadu who specialises in strength and conditioning. Father R Bharadwaj, who was a track and field athlete for India, also helped his son get fitter and stronger.
"During the [pandemic] period, we started training together," Sudharsan's mother told ESPNCricinfo. "I took care of his strength and conditioning, while my husband took care of Sai Sudharsan's running and ground training. We wanted to make sure he had strength and endurance - the foundation for fitness. If you have both, you can push to play any sport. Flexibility is also important.
"Because of Covid, all of us had to be indoors, and fitness became a family activity for us. Sai Sudharsan got addicted to it, and I also showed him videos of Virat Kohli, which motivated him and encouraged to become fitter and stronger. His brother also chucked a lot of balls to him at the nets. He used to do push-ups and then challenge Sai Sudharsan to do it."
Sudharsan went from strength to strength. His body got better, he got fitter and his batting showed great potential. A great player of spin-bowling from a young age, Sudharsan worked on his game against the fast bowlers. His career took a defining turn when he was picked up by the new IPL franchise, Gujarat Titans, in 2022. He was a consistent scorer in domestic cricket, but the international standards training he got at GT helped him mature as a cricketer.
A strike rate of 127.9 in five matches in his debut season was a bit of an issue. And just like his fitness and shortcomings against genuine pace, Sudharsan started working on it. He added the ramp shot to his arsenal and the results started to show from the next season. His strike rate improved and so did his run-scoring. Sudharsan scored 527 runs in 2024. Months before that, his dream of representing India came true when he made his ODI debut against South Africa.
But the ultimate goal remained playing Test cricket.
"It's everybody's dream to play (Test cricket) for the country," he had told Hindustan Times during the this year's IPL. "You get a very good platform like IPL to showcase our talent and if we do well, we obviously play for the country, we get an opportunity to represent our country. But I feel the most important thing right now is look at what the team needs, look at what the situation needs at that point in time and that point in game.
'If I do that really well and try and be so consistent in that and make my team win whenever possible, I think the other things will become a by-product of that,' he said.
He walked the talk. Sudharsan won the Orange Cap after scoring the most runs in IPL 2025. His 759 runs in 15 matches came at a strike rate of 156/17 - his best season by far.
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