Baby-faced bruiser Sooryavanshi floors England and the world

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi knows how to throw a punch.

For most of this Under-19 World Cup, he has been throwing them from a corner. Scores of 72, 40, 52, 30, 68. Significant innings. Breakneck strike-rates. But no headliner.

Much of his record-breaking run over the past few months has happened away from the high-definition cameras and social-media virality that first made his name during last year's IPL: a 36-ball century for Bihar, a 95-ball 171 at the Under-19 Asia Cup, a 42-ball 144 against UAE. You marvel at the numbers, but how do you make sense of them?

Sooryavanshi is in the middle at Harare Sports Club, opening for India in the final of this World Cup against England. His bat is lifted high, his head is still, his helmet outsized for his 14-year-old face. The bat is ready to swing down from its high resting point - in this he resembles fellow left-hander Brian Lara, his favourite batter. His bat commits only to tiny motions as it bobs up and down, like a boxer shuffling on his feet, while the bowler runs in.

Dean Jones once wrote in a book of cricket tips: "I don't really care what stance a batsman has as long as he gets into a boxer's position at ball release." Boxers often throw power into their punches through their shoulders. For now, Sooryavanshi stays side-on in his stance, not squaring his shoulders too early.

He takes his time, scoring 15 off his first 17 balls, slashing and missing on a quick pitch. Then, Alex Green comes on to bowl the sixth over, and bangs the ball in back of a length, slanting away from Sooryavanshi. His first six, off this delivery, is a marvel of mechanics, the heels of both feet lifting off the ground, upper body leaning back, bat face slicing open, all this designed so he can swing viciously at the ball just when it seems to be shooting past him, and generate maximum elevation. All these moving parts synchronise perfectly to launch the ball over deep third.

Green gave Suryavanshi the gift of width here, but what if you could cramp him? Left-arm quick James Minto puts the theory to test a couple of overs later: he angles this good-length ball into the stumps. It's a ball made to deny most batters room, but not Sooryavanshi, who contorts so that both his feet point straight back at the bowler, his hips now fully open.

His shoulders open up too: this changes Sooryavanshi's alignment so he can hit over the on side without hitting across the line of the ball. He launches it high over wide long-on and into the stands. This is the kind of shot that should come with health warnings. Your head could fall over, your feet could get into a tangle. Yours. Not Sooryavanshi's.

Most balls in his arc, from spinners and quicks, are dispatched in much the same way. He brings up his fifty, off 32 balls, and Manny Lumsden steams in to bowl the length of last resort. Unless one can break speed guns, banging the ball in short, on a pitch this flat, is seldom worth the effort. But one can try.

And Lumsden's effort is a good one. This delivery, angling in from right-arm around, finishes roughly around off stump, rising at Sooryavanshi's chest. A pull could bring the top edge into play, and this ball is nowhere near short enough for ducking or swaying. Sooryavanshi hops instead, both feet off the ground, displacing his entire body a few inches to the leg side in the process so the ball is right under his eyes. He opens the face of the bat, and because he plays this ball so late, it bisects the gap between backward point and short third. Four more.

England's bowlers try everything, and a lot of their efforts are good enough to throttle most batters. They have no effect on Sooryavanshi, who brings up his hundred off just 55 balls.

That's nearly two runs a ball, and he's still moving up the gears. He hits 27 off a Ralphie Albert over, then 20 off a Sebastian Morgan over. The number next to his name is just a blur now. He takes just 16 balls to go from 151, and another 24 off his next eight before he is dismissed. He hits 14 boundaries in these 24 deliveries: each time someone runs in, there's an almost two-thirds chance of Sooryavanshi hitting him for four or six.

Twenty-two yards separate the batter and bowler, but this feels like something more primal. The bowler takes his punches, goes off balance, and begins to feel just as dizzy as you are watching from the outside.

By the time Sooryavanshi is out, off a faint brush of the gloves back to the keeper, he has amassed 175 off 80 balls - the highest score by any batter in an ICC tournament final. Fifteen sixes, the most by a batter in a Youth ODI innings. All of 150 runs in boundaries, another record in a bevy that will dominate the headlines.

But if you watched him, the numbers feel almost beside the point. Just as it was when Chris Gayle scored his own 175 in 2013. In Gayle's T20 prime, he seemed to play a futuristic version of the sport that no one else had caught up to. Sooryavanshi, in many ways, has been similarly head and shoulders above the rest of this Under-19 batch. While being younger than anyone else.

This is a fact you know but forget, until he is dismissed and he walks back, helmet off, revealing just how baby-faced he remains. A baby-faced bruiser daring you to step into his ring.