Oracle Database Discussions

Hi,
I am trying to familiarize myself with a windows .bat file that connects to sqlplus and executes some commands. The login command in the file goes like this:

echo connect sys/pwd as sysdba;

The above command connects fine. But when I replace this command with:

echo sqlplus sys/sudhakar as sysdba;

It does not work. Why is this? The second command is how I would normally login to sqlplus, why does it not work in a batch file?

Thanks.