Sanjay Krishnamurthi frees up to crack six-hitting code in Chennai

Sanjay Krishnamurthi is a procrastinator

The winter holidays are done. The semester has started. Course work is piling up. And he's out there playing. And having fun with his friends. Nobody is stopping him. Not even his parents.

The T20 World Cup is the ultimate hall pass.

Krishnamurthi is studying computer science at San Jose State University. "Once I go back I'm going to be straight into it."

That'll be some change. Sitting in class after standing in front of 20,968 people offering rapturous applause.

"I came into this game with no expectation of any personal milestone, but then being able to lift my bat and wave it around at this incredible crowd was really special."

On Sunday, Krishnamurthi made an unbeaten 68 off 33 balls in USA's victory over Namibia, their third one ever in T20 World Cups. San Jose State better make room on the front page of their newsletter.

"My roommate knows nothing about cricket, but on his Google feed, one of the articles was like 'SJSU student conquers America's Golden Boy' or something like that," Krishnamurthi told them in 2024 when they featured him for athletic achievement after he hit Saurabh Netravalkar for one six in a Major League Cricket game. He hit six against Namibia.

"When I walked in… Actually before the game even started I told myself that I'm going to play absolutely freely, you know, whatever happens, happens. I think that's when I find myself at my best and then as I walked in, Monank [Patel] told me just play freely, play your game, so then my mindset was to try to get those runs for the team and not worry about building myself an innings, so that's why I was looking for boundaries from the beginning."

He's good at finding them too. Since the start of 2024, he has excelled as a middle-order power hitter in the MLC. Two point eight two. That's the difference between his strike rate (152.28) - aged 22 and just starting on the journey to filling out his t-shirt - and Kieron Pollard's (155.2) who is built like, well let's just say he should be checking his Insta every day to make sure he doesn't miss Arnold Schwarzenegger DMing him about improving the Predator handshake meme.

As a boy, Krishnamurthi was more of a bowler. He won the Anil Kumble spin stats event in Bengaluru. He broke into the Karnataka Under-16s. He has rubbed shoulders with a current Ranji Trophy run-machine R Smaran. The dream that began while watching India lift the 2011 ODI World Cup was taking shape. A move to the United States in 2020 could have dampened his cricketing ambitions considering they don't play first-class cricket but Krishnamurthi processed that as raw data - without positive or negative implications - and mapped out a way forward. He had been trying to be a certain kind of player - batting steady, batting long - but now he had to be a different kind of player, which he became by harnessing America's favourite pastime.

"I got a baseball coach with purely cricket in mind, so I had a cricket bat in hand, cricket balls, but he was teaching me how to generate that power."

Shane Watson liked what he saw in Krishnamurthi when he went to coach San Francisco Unicorns. "From the first season I was 19 and I got to work with him and he threw balls at me and I think he really liked my ability. He saw something in me there and he helped improve that and especially these shots over the offside, keeping the shoulder engaged."

Krishnamurthi showed off a couple of those in Chennai - hitting a high full toss for six over point and following that up by shovelling a near yorker for six over cover. He walked in when USA had hit a bit of a lull - there were only four boundaries between overs 7 and 14 - but once he started hitting - holding his shape so well - the game changed. USA had been looking for 175. They got up to 199.

"He has incredible talent," Monank said of Krishnamurthi. "As I said in the post match presentation, the way he bats, he can hit sixes whenever he wants. With that he has good cricketing mind also. His knock today was very crucial. Because of that knock we were able to cross the line."

The only problem is it's set a bad precedent. "Unfortunately, my family has come for every single game except today, so yeah, maybe they're the bad luck."