India recently announced a 19-member squad for the five-match T20I series against England that gets underway on March 12. As expected Rohit Sharma and Bhuvneshwar Kumar returned to the team, while young Rishabh Pant, whose heroics with the bat in the Test series against Australia are still fresh, also made the cut along with spinner Varun Chakravarthy, who had a terrific IPL.
Their IPL heroics also saw uncapped players Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan and Rahul Tewatia being called up for national duty.
Playing for India is one dream that ties the three men together but their journey to the national stage has been markedly different.
While the 30-year-old Yadav is the most experienced among them, he also had to wait the longest to bled blue. It was like his berth in the Indian team was waitlisted but couldn’t be confirmed because there was always someone else ahead of him.
Kishan seems to have timed it right and didn’t have to spend too much time on the waiting list like Yadav. The 22-year-old’s blistering knock of 173 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, the country’s top domestic one-day tournament, for Jharkhand against Madhya Pradesh couldn’t have come at a better time—just a few hours before the squad was to be announced,
But, it is Tewatia who seems to have landed a “tatkal ticket” in his journey to Team India. Yadav played 77 first-class games, Kishan 44 but Tewatia appeared in just seven before getting the call-up.
Yadav and Kishan also have had a couple of good seasons with Mumbai Indians, Tewatia only got noticed in the recent season of the cash-rich league after playing for three teams.
Long time coming
“The feeling is surreal,” tweeted Yadav, along with his picture at the DY Patil Stadium. It is no exaggeration. Much to the surprise of the game’s followers and many former greats, the 30-year-old batsman was overlooked for the tour of Australia.
For five years, messages and calls wishing him luck ahead of the selection day and “there is always the next time” calls the day after had become a painful routine. Yadav has been nothing but a consistent T20 player for eight years, which is impressive for a slam-bang format.
Batting at number three, and occasionally as an opener, Yadav, averages above 30 in 100 matches, with a strike rate of nearly 135. Neither Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma nor Shikhar Dhawan has such stats in IPL. Yadav made his IPL debut when Mumbai Indians paid Rs 70 lakh for him, with his game, the contract too has turned lucrative—he now commands Rs 3.2 crore a year but the biggest prize will be the Team India cap he will get the day he plays his first game for the country.
The lad from Dhoni-land
If Yadav belongs to the famous Mumbai gharana of Indian cricket, Kishan comes from Jharkhand, which was thrust into the cricketing limelight when MS Dhoni burst onto the scene.
The 22-year-old is invariably, and unfairly, compared to one of India’s most successful captains. The fact that he, too, is an aggressive batsman and wicket-keeper doesn’t help much. Kishan will try to carve a niche at a time when Dhoni has retired from international cricket, securing his place in the history of the game.
Dhoni comparison is far-fetched but that with Pant is fair. The man who unearthed Kishan’s talent was Pant’s childhood coach Tarak Sinha, who was the director of cricket at Jharkhand State Cricket Association in 2012-13.
During an open trial for budding cricketers from the state, Kishan stood out for his natural flair. And four years later, it was Rahul Dravid who suggested Kishan’s name to captain India Under-19 squad that included Pant.
Kishan perhaps knows India is unlikely to see another Dhoni in a long time but the swashbuckling left-handed batsman can challenge Pant for a place behind stumps in white-ball cricket.
A stunning rise
Haryana’s Rahul Tewatia kept a low-profile in his state team, which had some fine spinners like Amit Mishra, Yuzvendra Chahal and Jayant Yadav in its ranks. Even in IPL, no one knew much about him and during the December 2019 trading window, Delhi Capitals let go of him. And that perhaps is the best thing that happened to him.
Never a high-profile cricketer himself, Rajasthan Royals’ new head coach Andrew McDonald is known to be good at getting the best from his players. One net session and McDonald was convinced that Tewatia could be a game-changer, both with bat and ball.
His five stunning sixes in an over against Kings XI Punjab’s Sheldon Cottrell after struggling to score 5 runs in 13 balls is now part of the IPL folklore. Another such round of big-hitting for India can be the proverbial icing on Tewatia’s stunning journey.
“So far, I played against Virat Kohli in the IPL. Now I will play with him and share the dressing room with him. Can’t wait to share the dressing room with him and some of the best cricketers in world cricket,” said Tewatia after his selection.
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