Even the seemingly unrelenting Guwahati rain on Tuesday would stop for IPL’s most-anticipated duel of the Mumbai Indians vs Rajasthan Royals game. And when Jasprit Bumrah’s first delivery landed in the slot on leg-and-middle, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s bat was already where it needed to be. The ball began its flight towards the long-on stands. The backlift — high, exaggerated, past the vertical — had once again entered the cricketing consciousness of everyone watching. “Every time someone says his backlift is too high, he will get into problems, I chuckle,” says Zubin Bharucha, the coach who has mentored Sooryavanshi since he was 13. “He is smashing 155 kmph balls, hitting the likes of Bumrah and Jofra Archer. That’s his strength, that’s what makes him special”. The fundamental thing about that backlift, Bharucha says, is what it creates – “time and space”. The very facets batsmen yearn for but find difficult to attain against high-quality pace. “The very fear that his high backlift would make him late on the ball is counterintuitive. That bat swing actually creates time, …