NEW DELHI: Devender Sharma’s phone rang, just past midnight Saturday. In most ideas, midnight is the start of a new day, a changeover in the passage of time. The message in the call, too would be signifying that – a new start. But the voice at the other end was betraying no such reaction, remembers Sharma.
“Sir, aaj na mera debut ho gaya. (Sir, today I got my debut).” The ‘contents’ of the call was plain, telegram-like short, but the
Sonnet Club
coach immediately got the enormity of the meaning.
“He spoke as if nothing happened. He just wanted to listen what I had to say,” Sharma told TOI the morning after.
Mayank Yadav
, super-fast from Delhi, had just rattled a watching IPL-verse. Fuelled by sheer pace, with his 3/27 helping Lucknow Super Giants outbowl Punjab Kings in Lucknow, Saturday, then, was a ‘debut’ in every sense of the term.
“He has always been a simple and humble guy,” recalled Sharma, adding how during the 2021-22 winter, Yadav distributed sweets to everyone at Sonnet, because he had just made his debut for Delhi in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Then he had defended three runs in the final over of a chase, helping Delhi pull off a win. Now 21, the unassuming lad then seemed just happy that he was playing for Delhi and wanted to show his gratitude to his club and coaches, late Tarak Sinha and Devender Sharma.
Maybe the aversion to even permissible hyperbole is somewhere down to Yadav’s humble, no-frills upbringing. “His father ran a small-time commodity business which helped them make ends meet, that collapsed during Covid,” Sharma said, adding, “Tarak sir and I always believed that boys from humble backgrounds become better fast bowlers.
“He was a frail 14-year-old then, and we were looking for bowlers at the club. We could see he came from a humble background. Seven years ago, when we found him, he didn’t even have proper shoes,” the coach recalled. Sonnet Club has been arranging his bowling shoes since. The grounded-ness then, is not a choice but a compulsion. According to Sharma, Yadav used the Rs 30-lakh contract with LSG to get his house renovated and help his family.
There seems to be a constant dark, satirical joke with Yadav and footwear. Supposed to make his IPL debut last season, he pulled his hamstring during a practice match because his old spikes didn’t grip the damp crease. Even after being with the Lucknow franchise for three seasons now and playing for Delhi, Yadav is still to land a shoe contract. This even after a kind word from the Delhi and District Cricket Association top brass.
So, this IPL season, best understanding his circumstances, the speedster ordered himself a couple of pairs from Australia. He knows it will have to be good enough to sustain him through a gruelling season. “He has made enough over the last two years to afford at least this much,” revealed his coach.
There is a deceptive quality to Yadav that his survival instincts would have taught him to hold in good stead. At first glance, few would bet on him to bowl at 156 kmph like he did against Punjab last night.
“When he came to us, he was poorly noursished, underfed even. But his deliveries were hitting the nets hard,” laughed Yadav at the memory, “We felt we had found a natural.”
The coach then spelt out the beefing-up and the education: “He ate with us at the club. He is a vegetarian but always strong enough to effortlessly bowl quick. His deliveries skidded after pitching. But he soon learnt that he couldn’t be one-dimensional. The out-swing came naturally to him but with his pace, all batters had to do was slash hard and the edges would leak runs. So, we helped him develop the in-coming ball,” pointed out Sharma.
Life took a sudden favourable turn for the young bowler when during his Delhi debut at Mohali, Vijay Dahiya too happened to be there as Uttar Pradesh coach. “We were having joint nets session. Suddenly, I noticed him in the adjacent nets and immediately called up Gautam Gambhir,” remembered the former Delhi player. The Delhi connection helped, both Gambhir and Dahiya had been involved with LSG at that time.
“We decided to invest in him. We were not going to play him in the first season because he wasn’t ready mentally and physically. He didn’t have miles in his legs since he didn’t play junior cricket at the state level. But he was an important investment for us. Nobody knew about him but we picked him at the auction,” Dahiya revealed.
Yadav has been on the national selectors’ radar since the Deodhar Trophy earlier this season. KL Rahul, his skipper at LSG, bestows a lot of faith in him. He was called in to bowl to Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Rahul himself before the last Test series in South Africa. While he impressed the Indian stalwarts, that was also where he picked up a side-strain which was later diagnosed as a rib fracture, ruling him out of the Ranji season.
LSG is aware of the talent they have on their hands. “Even when he got injured, we didn’t release him. We have a facility in Mumbai which is very good for sports medicine. We sent Mayank there and got him ready for the IPL,” Dahiya said. The results are beginning to show, as the cricketing world got to see on Saturday . Maybe now, Devender Sharma will also look forward to the phone ringing past midnight. At the most, he will sleep with a speed-gun at his side.
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