Sikandar Raza thought he had him.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi had just skipped down the pitch to biff the ball into the stands. He didn't. But it still went 102 metres, and landed in the bleachers behind the Harare Sports Club.
The distance the ball travelled was astounding. The adjustment to make it possible, even more so. The key to the stroke wasn't Sooryavanshi's brute force or his back lift, but his timing to send it way beyond the wide long-off fence.
There was no bigger example than that to explain how barely two weeks after Jofra Archer and England kept going for his ribs and body with the short-ball ploy, Sooryavanshi looked like a batter capable of problem-solving on the fly.
That six was perhaps the icing on the cake, but there were several other moments in-game when Sooryavanshi showed adaptability. On a surface that was used for a second straight T20I, on which 40 overs and a bit had already been played, the slowness of it was beginning to affect his ability to hit boundaries at will.
On Saturday, in the second T20I, Sooryavanshi perished while attempting to take down Richard Ngavara, after he'd hit him for a sequence of 4, 6, 4, 4. In the first T20I, his half-century came off 18 balls, following which he perished immediately in his quest to sustain the onslaught. In comparison, Sunday's was slightly mellower, but equally effective.
India hadn't scored a single boundary between overs 7-10, but through that phase, Sooryavanshi buckled down, not once showing the desperation to hit out. We saw a version of the 15-year-old we hadn't seen often enough, having been so used to the thrill-a-minute joy ride he takes us on. This was Sooryavanshi prepared to milk the bowlers and dig himself in.
Even so, he brought up his half-century off just 31 deliveries in the 10th over. He had half an innings still to turn on the heat. Then after 20-ball passage of milking runs and losing Ishan Kishan, Sooryavanshi signalled a change of intent. Out came a bullet hit back past Wessly Madhevere, off his own bowling. And off the next ball, as if to simply prove he had more strings to his bow, Sooryavanshi reverse-swept the ball over a leaping short third fielder.
And incredibly, it didn't seem premeditated, but a calculated response to the bowler dangling the ball wide outside off, in trying to have Sooryavanshi hit towards the off-side pockets in front of square that were well protected. This was yet another example of Sooryavanshi upping his game awareness, and showing he'd put in enough work behind-the-scenes to be able to have the confidence to execute.
Sooryavanshi had decided to now go for the kill, even though he could've so easily walked to a century if he wished to. On 81 with over five overs left, he saw a hittable delivery in his arc, but miscued it to long-off. The party was over, and the applause that rang around the ground told you perhaps the admission fee had already been justified.
"My game is the same as what I play in T20 cricket," Sooryavanshi said after walking away with the match and series honours. "I was just trying to do that for the team. In all three matches, I tried to give the team a good start. If I got a good start, then I wanted to make the innings bigger. That was my only approach."
A man of few words for now, at least in front of the camera, the 'make the innings bigger' part of his response seemed to give a peek into a maturing mind. And then he followed up with: "The shots that I play are the same ones I practise. I just try to replicate in the match whatever I do in the practice sessions."
For someone synonymous with all-out aggression, Sooryavanshi attempted an attacking stroke only 22 times in his 49-ball innings. His strike rate of 165.41 may have also felt a lot more earthly, but it told you he's got an extraordinary cricket IQ for someone still 15.
There's been so much written and analysed about his Lara-esque backlift, the downswing and the power it generates. On Sunday, that the distance of his six - an eye-popping number - seemed secondary compared to the adjustment that made it possible told you, for all the excitement around Sooryavanshi's power, Zimbabwe may just have offered the first sustained glimpse of the batter he can yet become.