New Delhi: At the start of the season, Gujarat Titans (GT) opener Sai Sudharsan told TimesofIndia.com about how he had worked extensively on the technical aspects of his game to meet the demands of T20 cricket without losing his natural playing style. The southpaw had spoken about his mindset but had kept his cards close to his chest about the specific work he had done.
Last year, when Sai Sudharsan was in Australia with the India A team, he reached out to power-hitting coach Shanon Young to work on his T20 batting. Young, a specialist power-hitting coach who has worked with the likes of Glenn Maxwell , Marnus Labuschagne , Babar Azam , and Jake Fraser-McGurk, invited the southpaw to his Cricket Performance Lab in Melbourne.
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"His bat starts on the ground and his hands are quite low. He generates a lot of power from his backlift. His backlift goes past his shoulders, similar to Brian Lara . So, in the backswing, he generates a lot of momentum, which when he actually brings that through the downswing, he's generating force on the ball that gives him more power just because of those mechanics," Young told TimesofIndia.com from Melbourne.
A few days ago at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, Sai Sudharsan reached a triple-figure score with a six that went straight as an arrow over the head of bowler Kuldeep Yadav. He finished the chase with a six. He is currently leading the IPL 2025 run charts with 617 runs. It's not just the number of runs he has scored; it's the way he has scored them. His strike rate is 156.99. This season he's hit the most boundaries (68) and sixes (20) in his IPL career.
Despite playing an aggressive brand of cricket, Sai Sudharsan hardly loses shape. Against Delhi Capitals, he showed his full range of shots. He pulled, cut, drove, swept, and also played a few dinky ramp shots on both sides of the wicket.
"A lot of people now, be it Fraser-McGurk or Jos Buttler, have started holding the bat higher. It has become quite a modern trend, particularly in T20 and power-hitting, to actually start with the bat higher. The theory behind that is if you generate everything through the downswing, you can create quite a powerful swing. But for me, the reason why Sai has been so successful is because it's more traditional, and he generates the momentum in the backswing, which allows him to also play more traditional cricket shots through that power play. That's why his game is perfectly suited to all three formats," he says.
Holding the Shape
Young credits Sudharsan's stable base and height for not losing shape while hitting big sixes in T20s.
"He has a really stable base, and I was surprised when he came in; he's quite tall. I don't know his actual height, maybe six feet two inches [just over six feet]. The interesting thing with that is he bats tall. When he generates power through his hands via the backlift, his base is stable, and he doesn't have to do anything else to generate that power. So he can do it through a really stable base, and then he uses the ground really well, resulting in a really fluent bat swing," explains Young.
Young reveals Sai has the highest recorded wingspan of any professional player they have had in the lab. "This means the distance between his outstretched arms is much higher than his height. It also helps with leverage and energy swinging the bat," he says.
The work
Sai Sudharsan reached out to Young with the help of a couple of his old Surrey teammates, Kobe Herft and Laurie Evans. Young and his team prepared a presentation backed by data and biomechanics. The opener spent three hours at the lab with his elder brother Sai Ram and mother Usha Bhardwaj watching from the sidelines.
"We didn't do a whole lot technically with him. We talked about how he uses the ground. We have a balance plate here that, as part of the bat fitting process, allows us to understand how much force goes through the ground. So when you understand the science of power hitting, a lot of it is about how much momentum we generate with the body. Most of the biomechanical analysis and the science suggests that the greatest force we can generate is by using that stored energy through the ground.
Who's that IPL player?
"So the analogy I use is, 'Imagine a spring. If you stand on a spring and then take your foot off the spring, what happens to the spring? It will bounce.' Now that is because that spring has stored energy. When you take your foot off the spring, it reverts back to its normal state but uses that energy, and the energy is what drives that spring off the ground. So power hitting is very similar; the energy we store in our body before we get to the point of contact is the energy that gets transferred through the ball at the point of contact," explains Young.
Young says why Sai looks so elegant even while hitting big shots is because, unlike the current T20 bashers like Fraser-McGurk, Travis Head , or Abhishek Sharma , he doesn't play the high-risk game.
"Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Fraser-McGurk — they're playing high-risk cricket. The returns are high, but the risk is also high. Now, Shubman Gill and Sai Sudharsan at GT are minimising the risk by playing traditional cricket shots but with high impact," he says.
What is BPI?
During Sai's visit to the lab, Chris Hall, who works at the lab as a bat fitter, pinpointed a few problems with the five bats Sai was carrying with him.
"I think he had five bats, all lovely bats. All were used in various stages. The thing is, when the pros come in, obviously they have some new bats, they have their favourites, and what we do is we modify their bats so they all effectively swing the exact same way.
"So across those five bats, there were slight variations in weight and shape. This is also what we do at the performance lab; we actually modify bats to the same BPI," he says.
"BPI is a Balance Point Index. That's our technology we use to determine how a bat swings and feels, essentially matching a player's bat to their swing technique and physical strength," says Young.
"Traditionally, when you have a bat, let's say everything's on weight, there'll be a certain weight, and he'll say, 'I like it,' and you guys do the metrics. Most of the bat stuff we do is still old school, still in pounds or imperial. But all we've had the ability to do as cricket players and coaches is choose bats on weight and how they look, you know, you'll see people flick them for ping and all that sort of stuff. Now what we did is we came up with a BPI metric that allows us to place an objective measurement on the feel of a cricket bat.
"What happened was when Sai came in and he hit with all his bats, and we measured his exit velocity, his launch angle, how much ground force he had, his bat velocity, backlift angles. We captured heaps of data, and we went through the five bats and then showed him the data of the one that actually performed the best.
"Then we took the other four bats and made them exactly the same as the one that performed the best. I took his bats, got them modified, and dropped them back to his hotel the next day. I think he was leaving the next day, so we turned his bats around quicker than normal," he says.
While he sits atop the IPL 2025 run charts, Sudharsan is not just showcasing form, he's making a compelling case for the future of Indian batting: one that blends data-driven preparation with traditional grace.
Last year, when Sai Sudharsan was in Australia with the India A team, he reached out to power-hitting coach Shanon Young to work on his T20 batting. Young, a specialist power-hitting coach who has worked with the likes of Glenn Maxwell , Marnus Labuschagne , Babar Azam , and Jake Fraser-McGurk, invited the southpaw to his Cricket Performance Lab in Melbourne.
Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel.
"His bat starts on the ground and his hands are quite low. He generates a lot of power from his backlift. His backlift goes past his shoulders, similar to Brian Lara . So, in the backswing, he generates a lot of momentum, which when he actually brings that through the downswing, he's generating force on the ball that gives him more power just because of those mechanics," Young told TimesofIndia.com from Melbourne.
A few days ago at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, Sai Sudharsan reached a triple-figure score with a six that went straight as an arrow over the head of bowler Kuldeep Yadav. He finished the chase with a six. He is currently leading the IPL 2025 run charts with 617 runs. It's not just the number of runs he has scored; it's the way he has scored them. His strike rate is 156.99. This season he's hit the most boundaries (68) and sixes (20) in his IPL career.
Despite playing an aggressive brand of cricket, Sai Sudharsan hardly loses shape. Against Delhi Capitals, he showed his full range of shots. He pulled, cut, drove, swept, and also played a few dinky ramp shots on both sides of the wicket.
Game sealed ✅
— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 18, 2025
Playoffs booked ✅
An unbeaten 2️⃣0️⃣5️⃣-run partnership between Sai Sudharsan & Shubman Gill does the job for #GT 💙
Updates ▶ https://t.co/4flJtatmxc #TATAIPL | #DCvGT | @gujarat_titans pic.twitter.com/Uz3ZdMTy0X
"A lot of people now, be it Fraser-McGurk or Jos Buttler, have started holding the bat higher. It has become quite a modern trend, particularly in T20 and power-hitting, to actually start with the bat higher. The theory behind that is if you generate everything through the downswing, you can create quite a powerful swing. But for me, the reason why Sai has been so successful is because it's more traditional, and he generates the momentum in the backswing, which allows him to also play more traditional cricket shots through that power play. That's why his game is perfectly suited to all three formats," he says.
Holding the Shape
Young credits Sudharsan's stable base and height for not losing shape while hitting big sixes in T20s.
"He has a really stable base, and I was surprised when he came in; he's quite tall. I don't know his actual height, maybe six feet two inches [just over six feet]. The interesting thing with that is he bats tall. When he generates power through his hands via the backlift, his base is stable, and he doesn't have to do anything else to generate that power. So he can do it through a really stable base, and then he uses the ground really well, resulting in a really fluent bat swing," explains Young.
Young reveals Sai has the highest recorded wingspan of any professional player they have had in the lab. "This means the distance between his outstretched arms is much higher than his height. It also helps with leverage and energy swinging the bat," he says.
The work
Sai Sudharsan reached out to Young with the help of a couple of his old Surrey teammates, Kobe Herft and Laurie Evans. Young and his team prepared a presentation backed by data and biomechanics. The opener spent three hours at the lab with his elder brother Sai Ram and mother Usha Bhardwaj watching from the sidelines.
A brilliant moment for Sai Sudharsan! 🫶💯
— Surrey Cricket (@surreycricket) August 30, 2024
🤎 | #SurreyCricket https://t.co/rin3LLBhRR pic.twitter.com/76IvDxViih
"We didn't do a whole lot technically with him. We talked about how he uses the ground. We have a balance plate here that, as part of the bat fitting process, allows us to understand how much force goes through the ground. So when you understand the science of power hitting, a lot of it is about how much momentum we generate with the body. Most of the biomechanical analysis and the science suggests that the greatest force we can generate is by using that stored energy through the ground.
Who's that IPL player?
"So the analogy I use is, 'Imagine a spring. If you stand on a spring and then take your foot off the spring, what happens to the spring? It will bounce.' Now that is because that spring has stored energy. When you take your foot off the spring, it reverts back to its normal state but uses that energy, and the energy is what drives that spring off the ground. So power hitting is very similar; the energy we store in our body before we get to the point of contact is the energy that gets transferred through the ball at the point of contact," explains Young.
Young says why Sai looks so elegant even while hitting big shots is because, unlike the current T20 bashers like Fraser-McGurk, Travis Head , or Abhishek Sharma , he doesn't play the high-risk game.
"Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Fraser-McGurk — they're playing high-risk cricket. The returns are high, but the risk is also high. Now, Shubman Gill and Sai Sudharsan at GT are minimising the risk by playing traditional cricket shots but with high impact," he says.
What is BPI?
During Sai's visit to the lab, Chris Hall, who works at the lab as a bat fitter, pinpointed a few problems with the five bats Sai was carrying with him.
"I think he had five bats, all lovely bats. All were used in various stages. The thing is, when the pros come in, obviously they have some new bats, they have their favourites, and what we do is we modify their bats so they all effectively swing the exact same way.
"So across those five bats, there were slight variations in weight and shape. This is also what we do at the performance lab; we actually modify bats to the same BPI," he says.
"BPI is a Balance Point Index. That's our technology we use to determine how a bat swings and feels, essentially matching a player's bat to their swing technique and physical strength," says Young.
"Traditionally, when you have a bat, let's say everything's on weight, there'll be a certain weight, and he'll say, 'I like it,' and you guys do the metrics. Most of the bat stuff we do is still old school, still in pounds or imperial. But all we've had the ability to do as cricket players and coaches is choose bats on weight and how they look, you know, you'll see people flick them for ping and all that sort of stuff. Now what we did is we came up with a BPI metric that allows us to place an objective measurement on the feel of a cricket bat.
"What happened was when Sai came in and he hit with all his bats, and we measured his exit velocity, his launch angle, how much ground force he had, his bat velocity, backlift angles. We captured heaps of data, and we went through the five bats and then showed him the data of the one that actually performed the best.
"Then we took the other four bats and made them exactly the same as the one that performed the best. I took his bats, got them modified, and dropped them back to his hotel the next day. I think he was leaving the next day, so we turned his bats around quicker than normal," he says.
While he sits atop the IPL 2025 run charts, Sudharsan is not just showcasing form, he's making a compelling case for the future of Indian batting: one that blends data-driven preparation with traditional grace.
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