From bitter to better experience

On Tuesday, Vijay Shankar completed his first year in international cricket in style. He turned in a match-winning all-round performance of 46 runs at No. 5 and 2/15 with his medium-pace in Nagpur to give India an eight-run win and a 2-0 lead in the five-match ODI series against Australia. His wickets came in the last over when he was defending 10 runs, trapping the dangerous Marcus Stoinis first ball, conceded two to Adam Zampa second ball and then clean bowled the No. 11 with the third.

It was on March 6, 2018 that Vijay made his international debut, in the Nidahas Trophy T20 tri-series in Colombo. Though he justified his selection with a Man-of-the-Match performance in only his second T20I with 2/32 in 4 overs, he was criticised in the final against Bangladesh. Batting for the first time for Team India, he scored 17 painstaking runs off 19 balls when India needed boundaries aplenty to win. That the victory came from his Tamil Nadu statemate Dinesh Karthik with a last-ball six may have been a bit of a relief.

Following his match-winning show in Nagpur, life has come a full circle for Vijay. He wanted to prove everyone that he can pull it off and wipe out the bad memory of the T20 tri-series final.

Mention Nidahas Trophy to Vijay's father, H Shankar, and he immediately says: "It was a lesson for him. That is how his life started in cricket. He started to learn. He learnt a lot of things from that final."

Not only did he learn from that final but he also got better with each outing, determined to improve upon his previous performance every time and not put pressure on himself.

Talking to DNA from Chennai on Wednesday, Shankar said the Nidahas Trophy final "terribly disturbed Vijay for the first four days on return".

"When he was sitting idle, he'd tend to think what went wrong. He had three-four sleepless nights," said the 60-year-old Shankar.

Vijay overcame that by working hard with trainer Rajini, who kept him fully occupied. Shankar said: "Trainer Rajini helped him a lot. He was training continuously that he didn't have any opportunity to think about Nidahas Trophy. By the time he'd finish, he'd have bath, have dinner and crash for the day. Vijay never had time to think about that. He was occupied in training, gym sessions, swimming and other practice sessions."

As parents, Shankar told his 28-year-old son that they can only motivate him. "We were supporting him a lot. We know as a sportsperson what he can take and what he cannot. He is very sensitive by nature. We kept on telling him not to worry and that he will come back strong," said Shankar, who is joint secretary of Kanchipuram District Cricket Association in Tamil Nadu and a former club cricketer himself.

Now with the entire cricketing world talking about Vijay's recent success, and captain Virat Kohli speaking high of his all-round abilities, Shankar summed up his son's maiden international series in Sri Lanka thus: "That was a better experience and a bitter experience. He was man of the match in his second game, and the final cannot be forgotten for those three dot balls in the last over that gave him too much of disturbance. But, he likes to keep proving people wrong every time."

Shankar has been constantly encouraging his cricketing son for a long time that since he heard of Vijay's desire of taking to cricket seriously in his late teens, he built a spacious, well-lit cricket net, 90ft by 20ft on the terrace of his independent house at Chennai suburban Madipakkam.

"As Vijay has a personal coach in S Balaji for 15 years, the terrace net cut down his travel time, which he would otherwise had to do for coaching elsewhere," said Shankar. "Here, he can play all the shots, can understand all the shots and check if he is playing in the correct areas."

Even today, Vijay goes to his terrace net before any series/tour. Shankar said that Vijay uses a rod to bat at the terrace net, then a narrow bat and then the regular-sized bat. "That gives him confidence to play his shots. He still carries his narrow bat wherever he goes," said Shankar, who dreams of seeing his son play for India in whites.

Such has been the turn of events for Vijay that when he was first selected to play for India 'A' for the tour of Australia more than three years ago, he had a knee problem, was advised surgery and was replaced by Hardik Pandya on that tour. Coincidentally, Vijay replaced Pandya on the tour of Australia in January this year for the limited-overs and made his ODI debut in Melbourne.

Now, he seems to be doing all the right things that he is a strong contender for the all-rounder's slot for the World Cup along with Hardik Pandya.

DID YOU KNOW?

In the two ODIs that he has batted so far, he has scored 45 against New Zealand in Wellington at No. 6 and 46 against Australia in Nagpur at No. 5, both times being run out