A geometry lesson served with calm contempt

For the entirety of his turbo-charged, dizzying display of a maiden international century, that dropped jaws and caused a stir, Suryakumar Yadav showed no signs of panic. He raced from 65 to 100 in 10 balls as if he were weaving through traffic during Mumbai's non-peak hours. His cool was unrattled even when new batter Dinesh Karthik played three dot balls in the 16th over and sent the required rate soaring past 15. For when the strike was turned over, Suryakumar duly beat point for two straight fours to complete a 48-ball hundred.

The helmet wasn't yanked off as much as it was gently removed, and from under it emerged a grin that could just about classify as one. Only so much for a knock that had both Rohit Sharma and Jos Buttler terming it as 'one of the best T20 100s' seen.

Through his 55-ball 117 that almost made light of a 215 chase, Suryakumar provided another giddying look at the full range of his unique wristy talent. His was a mixture of fearless, relentless, calculated and unhurried hitting taken to the next level. No bowler, of the fast or the spin variety, was singled out for pain and no fielder was left discriminated against for having been fielding in a cold zone. To those at the receiving end, it was a geometry lesson in calm contempt. It was fitting therefore that it finished with a 51-49 split between runs on the off-side and the legside.

T20 batting can sometimes appear a little monotonic when there's a lot of power play on display. Not when Suryakumar indulges in needlepoint strokeplay. At Trent Bridge he was a batsman who sized up where he was, what he was up against and then went about chasing a 200+ target with precision and an evolved intelligence of batting - an ability to orchestrate unorthodox violence with minimum fuss.

He was called into bat 16 balls into India's chase. By the end of the PowerPlay, he was 8 of 12 and his team 31 for 3. David Willey, who'd bowled his first two overs for 13, didn't do much wrong with the first two balls of his third over. He angled the first one across the batter from over the stumps with a sweeper stationed on the offside. Suryakumar, though, used his wrists to open his bat face and sent the ball squarer for a four. To the next, on off-stump, Suryakumar walked across his stumps and spun his wrists the other way round for a whipped six behind square leg.

From thereon the tempo never waned. Whenever Suryakumar wanted to hit a boundary, he found a relentlessly seductive way to do it. Chris Jordan tried to hit the hard lengths that has troubled other Indian batters this series. Other batters. Suryakumar arched back after a little forward press and played the lofted drive over extra cover. The fuller ball was hit over mid-off with a high elbow and a lunged follow through for good measure. The legspinner Liam Livingstone was hit for three fours in his first over across a 270 degree arc - a square drive through point, a flick through mid-wicket and a sweep past short fine-leg.

When two overs of Livingstone's spin cost England 36, the impressive Richard Gleeson returned and conceded a six for no real fault of his. Suryakumar shuffled towards his leg-stump and carved a perfectly good length ball angling into leg stump over backward point for six. The beauty of the stroke was that he made it look all too elementary. There was only a hint of premeditation but no release of suppressed nervous energy or a sense of over-keenness.

In short, it looked like the many other extraordinary T20 knocks he's played wearing a different shade of blue in the IPL. No dramatic change in method or tactics devised in the moment. That it ended in defeat was an unfortunate consequence of the rest of the line-up scoring 72 off 66 between them.

Even before today's knock - Suryakumar, the only Indian batsman with a strike-rate above 150 after 10 innings and 360-degree range, should have been untouchable. The evidence from Nottingham was unequivocal: India's fifth (male) T20I centurion should be one of the first names on the team sheet on October 23.