Virender Sehwag was a cricketer of many extraordinary gifts, but the thing that made him so different from other players with similar gifts in his era was an ability to distil the complex art of batting into a pursuit of crystal-clear simplicity. His philosophy could be condensed into two maxims: "forget the previous ball" and "see ball, hit ball". The philosophy existed even before anyone needed to put words to it. He didn't need to repeat the words to himself as the bowler ran in. They were already part of his very being.
When Priyansh Arya, another opening batter from Delhi, took strike Tuesday night, he could have been excused if his previous ball was playing on his mind. That ball was a jaffa from Jofra Archer that had snaked from leg to top of off at 144.6kph and bowled him for a golden duck.
From all available evidence, that ball occupied no part of Arya's mind when he faced up to his first ball on Tuesday. From all available evidence, his only thought was some verbal or non-verbal version of "see ball, hit ball". Khaleel Ahmed's length was okay, and he even got a bit of swing away from the left-hand batter, but he gave Arya width, and he wasn't going to stand around and let width go unpunished. He took a short step forward, but not across, so he could extend his arms fully and carve the ball high over backward point for six.
Minimal footwork, still head, stable base, and a gloriously unconstrained bat-swing. A flashback in a mirror.
Over the next four balls Arya faced, the flip side of that lack of footwork began to make itself felt. He was nearly out caught-and-bowled off the leading edge, and another edge lobbed just wide of short third.
All this, however, was out of Arya's mind when he faced up to the fifth legal ball of Khaleel's over. Here was width again, and another chance to free his arms. The first six had gone behind square; this one went just in front, more punch than carve.
This IPL 2025 game between Punjab Kings (PBKS) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) kept giving Arya the chance to worry about the previous ball, or balls of comparable recency. Each time, he paid no heed, and chose instead to simply see the ball in front of him and give it a whack.
PBKS had just lost their first wicket when he took strike for the first time in the second over. Mukesh Choudhary went short and erred marginally down the leg side, and Arya, standing more or less still but having enough time to shift his weight from front foot to back, hooked him for six.
When he faced up in the fourth over, PBKS had just lost their second wicket, that of their captain Shreyas Iyer. It didn't inhibit Arya in any way - it didn't even stop him driving at catchable height through the off-side ring as he crashed Choudhary for three successive fours.
PBKS kept losing wickets, Arya kept playing his shots, and he didn't stop even after he had come close to getting out. Another aerial square drive brushed the fingers of the diving point fielder, when PBKS were 49 for 2. They were 114 for 5 when a miscued loft ended up in the hands of long-off, only for the fielder to step on a boundary cushion.
Arya's instincts were keeping PBKS going at ten an over or thereabouts even when they were losing so many wickets. At the time of that fluffed chance at long-off, Arya had scored over 64% of PBKS's runs. By the time he was out for 103 off 42 balls, he had upped that percentage to nearly 67.
The century, which came off 39 balls, was the joint-fourth-quickest in IPL history, and the quickest by an uncapped batter. If those facts didn't make his innings special enough, throw in the fact that the others in the PBKS top six scored 0, 9, 4, 9 and 1.
Interviewed during the break between innings, Arya seemed to suggest that the conditions in Mullanpur demanded that he had to keep batting this way even as his partners came and went. PBKS had just set CSK a target of 220, and this is what he said when asked about the conditions and what he thought of his team's chances: "The ball is coming on nicely. It is not turning much. We have to bowl in good areas and take as many wickets as we can in the powerplay."
Arya didn't seem to think PBKS were safe despite the magnitude of their total, and they eventually only won by 18 runs.
This, increasingly, is the way of T20 - or certainly the way of the IPL. Teams batting first are loath to let early wickets - PBKS lost five in the first eight overs here - curtail their ambitions. Better lose big in the pursuit of possible victory than lose by a respectable margin having given up the chance of winning.
Embracing this thinking takes doubt away from players like Arya, and gives them the license to be themselves, no matter what. After the match, PBKS captain Iyer said he had reinforced this message to Arya after his first-baller against Archer.
"When I had a chat with him in the last game, he was a bit timid in terms of his decision-making when he faced Jofra," Iyer said. "Today, when he went out to bat, he was like, 'I'm just backing my instincts - I saw the ball pitched in my area and I was just free-flowing'. And that's the mindset I want each and every individual playing in the team to have. One odd day, you don't have it your way, but today he kept on going, he was fearless, and it basically was one of the top knocks I've seen in the IPL so far."
In his post-match press conference, CSK head coach Stephen Fleming noted how Arya's willingness to take on risk, in the circumstances PBKS were in, had shifted pressure back onto the bowlers.
"It's very brave, when you come off a first-ball dismissal, to look to play a shot like that," Fleming said. "Our fault was we were too wide. The plan was to bowl straight, at the stumps, and create some pressure that way. The first ball we bowled straight, we created a caught-and-bowled chance, and that [had it been caught] changes the night quite drastically.
"So we were just a little sloppy. We were put under pressure, and the young man hit some amazing shots. We succumbed a little bit to that pressure by putting the ball in areas that he was stronger in, and we just didn't adjust quick enough. He countered us, he played some beautiful shots.
"When batsmen at the other end are faltering, it's pretty special to go out and create the innings yourself, and that was what he was doing for a majority of the game."
As Fleming observed, Arya's innings was special not just for his uncluttered, unfettered mindset but the quality of his shot-making too. PBKS wanted both these things when they fought off furious interest from Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) to sign Arya for INR 3.8 crore, more than ten times his base price, at the last auction.
At times on Tuesday, Arya deceived you into thinking he was merely putting bad balls away, so simple did he make his stand-and-deliver method look. But every so often he played a shot that made you gasp.
He went from 47 to 53, for instance, by exposing all his stumps against a ball that R Ashwin fired towards middle and leg, and flat-batting it over wide long-off.
Then, on 80, Matheesha Pathirana slung a low full-toss across Arya from over the wicket. It was just inside the wide guideline when it reached the batter. It was close to being a well-executed wide yorker, and Arya opened his bat face and sliced underneath the ball to send it flying flat and effortless over the backward-point boundary.
And he hit an even better shot next ball. This was a genuinely good ball from Pathirana, skidding towards Arya's left hip from just short of a length, giving him barely any room to work with and barely any time. Or so you thought until his bat came scything across the ball and slightly underneath it to half-pull, half-shovel it over the midwicket boundary.
A relatively regulation pull brought him another six off the next ball, and the century came up off the ball after that, via an edged four to third. He was batting on 102 off 39 balls, and the other six PBKS batters who had batted up to this point had, between them, scored 46 off 40 balls. This 24-year-old playing just his fourth IPL game, with no first-class experience and just 25 domestic white-ball games coming into this tournament, had taken on an attack boasting 732 international caps and torn it to shreds.