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Special talents need additional resources to get the most out of them

Ian Bishop19-Apr-2024Everybody agrees that Mayank Yadav is a special talent. It’s very rare to have someone who can consistently bowl around 145kph and go up to the mid-150s. Mayank’s got something that you can’t buy: pace and control.But he also has an injury history, and in this he is not unique. We have seen a number of Indian fast-bowling talents break down. Rohit Sharma, I remember, had expressed his frustration about bowlers picking up injuries frequently.Mayank’s body needs management and it needs great strengthening. How do we ensure his talent gets the chance to blossom fully?Related

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I am a big American sports fan and I particularly follow the NBA, where the top players (or their teams) invest in themselves to the tune of millions of dollars in terms of having support staff and systems. Tennis players, too, do the same. I believe it is time for cricket to go that way – for the top franchises and national teams to preserve special talents like Mayank and support their growth.Pat Cummins is a very good example of someone who came in as a teenager and found that the stresses of the game were too much for his particular technique and his body. He had to come out, rehabilitate, make himself different technically, and return a few years later. And as we’ve found out, Cummins has managed to build an exceptional career, where he has developed into one of the best fast bowlers and captains.It would be a good idea for Mayank at the start of his career to have the inputs Cummins found he required. Whether it’s Lucknow Super Giants, Mayank’s IPL team, or the BCCI, they can undertake a project – not an experiment, mind you – to say, “This guy is a diamond. Let us see if we can allocate some sort of funding and see where this goes.”Give him a personal strength-and-conditioning trainer for, say, a year. Attach that person to him, not just have the player fly somewhere every six weeks for those resources. Maybe have another medical person on the panel as well. And perhaps a dietician too. Build him up.

You don’t have to tell a guy what to do right. But I can tell a guy what to do because I have made the same mistake. I can tell him what to do to avoid that. We don’t have to leave a lot of these things up to players finding out through trial and error

Mayank will still be playing cricket through this, to be clear; just that this person is attached to him. See how that pans out after a year. You have the resources for an effort like this.Whether in the future Mayank plays a lot of red-ball cricket, whether he plays all formats, or whether you keep him as a white-ball option you will be able to know after a year or two. So it is a worthwhile project, not only for India and LSG, but for the world game. This young kid, who is 21 now, by the time he’s 23 or 24, when his body has matured, he can give you almost a decade of excellent fast bowling. That’s one thing I’d like to see happen.Alongside the physical development, it is also imperative that young fast bowlers like Mayank get to hear the right voices. I came through at a time when the great Malcolm Marshall was around. While I thought Marshall was one of the greatest tactical fast bowlers that I interacted with, I could only talk with him when we were on the field together or when we were in the dressing room together. Had I been able to access his insights more often, and while I was younger, it would have expedited my learning curve. I have no doubt about that.So I get a little frustrated that icons like, say, Jasprit Bumrah, are not made to interact frequently with young fast men. When we hear Bumrah speak, we know that he understands the game. He’s clear in his thinking and he’s a great communicator. For the next generation, the Under-19 guys, and even for those who are playing alongside him, you could organise some formal Zoom meetings and have him share his wisdom with them. Bumrah doesn’t have to fly everywhere; just utilise technology.Let him talk through formal bowling plans, preparation, what he would do in certain situations. Let him talk through variations in pace and lengths, and how he sees the game. Expedite that learning curve. It doesn’t have to be something that happens every month – half-yearly or quarter-yearly should work.Jasprit Bumrah is too good a cricket brain to not be taking lessons from•Getty ImagesMS Dhoni is a similar example. Excellent captain. If you want to bring in your next generation of leaders, why not tap into his expertise? I’m not saying that these two gentlemen are the only people to talk to, but you get the drift.I picked up something always from talking to Wasim Akram when Derbyshire played Lancashire at Old Trafford. I picked up a lot from Marshall, as I said. Michael Holding, when I met him briefly early in my career, gave me something that I had to sift through and that I could hold on to. You can give players a lot of inputs without overloading them with too many different opinions. This is like a university of fast bowling. Why not formalise it?Kartik Tyagi might run into Bumrah after an IPL match and he might stand and talk to him for five minutes. We could do more than that. I thought Tyagi was someone who could have pushed on, but he has had injuries.You don’t have to tell a guy what to do right. But I can tell a guy what to do because I have made the same mistake. I can tell him what to do to avoid that. We don’t have to leave a lot of these things up to players finding out through trial and error.Let us not only leave these things to playing a lot of first-class cricket and learning as you go, but let us supplement it from the outside as well. Let them play, but also let us help them with knowledge. It is time to start being a little bit more precise and determined in our development of players, especially if you have the resources for it.

The 29-year-old has had an up-and-down India career but that has worked in her favour

Sruthi Ravindranath15-Jun-2024D Hemalatha’s life was going exactly as she had planned. It was the 2015-16 season and she had started playing cricket only three years prior. But she rose through the ranks and was already on the verge of being called up to the Indian team. But a motorcycle accident left her with a broken wrist. She had injured her top hand. She was advised to take a year or two off from playing cricket. Excessive hand movement may aggravate the injury, she was warned.”‘ (that was the biggest setback of my life),” Hemalatha, who was only 20 at the time of the event, said to ESPNcricinfo. “I couldn’t digest the fact that I was going to lose two years to this. I was at my peak age. I was in form. In cricket, not playing for 2-3 months is seen as a setback, and one or two years was drastic, especially at the start of my career.”Even with her wrist bandaged, she was itching to hold her bat. She would check the grip every time she walked past it. In just one and a half months after the accident, she took out the bat, swinging it around with her bottom hand. And within seven months, she was back to playing full-time. She owes all of it to her ‘love’ for cricket.”Every time I looked at my bat, I’d want to pick it up. I was mentally stressed just thinking about it. It’s probably [the thing] that pushed me to recover within seven months. But that was the time I worked on my mental strength. It’s only during those hard times you’ll think more. The way you speak to yourself, the reason you’re working to achieve. The hard times taught me how to grow mentally. That’s my life lesson.”Hemalatha was forced to start from scratch again after her accident, but very soon found herself in the India A mix. Following a couple of impressive performances for India A against the Australia and England A sides, she earned a maiden call-up to the senior side in March 2018. She eventually made her India debut in July that year against Sri Lanka following which she also found a place in the T20 World Cup squad in 2018.Even after making the India squad, her career continued on an up-and-down course. After the Women’s Asia Cup in October 2022, she spent the next 16 months out of the team.Hemalatha: My strike rate should be more than 100, I focus on that•ECB via Getty ImagesIt was the “mental strength” Hemalatha had cultivated during these difficult times that played a big role in her comeback into the Indian team this time around. After sitting out of the senior side for 16 months following an average run, she was called up for the T20I series against Bangladesh in April-May this year. Her superb outing in that series has also earned her a spot in the white-ball sides for the South Africa series. And it’s an opportunity she is not taking for granted.”When I realised I’m getting a chance again [with the Indian team], I told myself I wanted to make use of the opportunities,” she said. “It doesn’t matter at which level you play, you need that mental strength. Playing for India is a big goal, but only if I perform in these smaller games I can get there, and for that too you need mental strength. Even when I made my India comeback, I didn’t take it easy. It was not my end goal. I never thought ‘there’s nothing bigger than this’. Even after getting there, I was focused on giving my best for the team, was thinking of all the ways to win a game.”Hemalatha says they were small games but in actual fact, those games, and her performances in them were anything but small. She scored 199 runs in six innings at 49.75 for Railways in the Senior Women’s T20 Trophy last year. She scored two fifties and played a part in Railways’ title win in the Senior Women’s One-Day Trophy this year and then went on to win the Women’s Inter-Zonal ODI Trophy with Central Zone. She shone brightly in Gujarat Giants’ otherwise dull season in the WPL, her 74 off 40 against Mumbai Indians being one of the highlights.With Jemimah Rodrigues and Yastika Bhatia out due to injuries and Hemalatha showing the kind of consistency that could no longer be ignored, India gave her the No. 3 role in Bangladesh and she didn’t disappoint.During her comeback match, the second T20I in Sylhet, she showed off just how well she strikes the ball, coming down the track to middle offspinner Sultana Khatun over cow corner for her first big hit of the day, ending with 41 off 24 balls. Over the course of four games, she showcased a fine range of shots, from picture-perfect cover drives to lofts down the ground to sweetly-timed sweeps to finish with a series-highest strike rate of 141.55D Hemalatha was a bright spot in an otherwise dull 2024 WPL campaign for the Gujarat Giants•BCCI”My strike rate should be more than 100, I focus on that,” Hemalatha said. “I work on my basics and that helps with my hard-hitting. Batting is all about timing, so I work on that. If you have good timing, the ball will go long. I have been working on my range-hitting as well. Even during the WPL I worked on it. I don’t focus only on that in my training though, if there’s a requirement for me to hit it, I will. But if there’s a situation where I need to stay at the crease, I will stay. I can play both. I never plan my innings before.”Hemalatha got to know women played cricket professionally only before she got into college in 2012. She was excited about the prospect of making a career out of it. Her parents, initially hesitant about her new career path, eventually encouraged her to take it up. Her father had one piece of advice for her: ‘Whatever you do, put your heart into it’. She learnt her basics from her coach, Sriram, in her neighbourhood. Once she got selected for the Tamil Nadu state team, she started training under Peter Fernandez, a well-known cricket coach in Chennai.She then moved from Tamil Nadu to the Railways domestic team, where she played with Mithali Raj, one of her idols. They played together in the Indian team as well and were reunited at the WPL where Mithali is Giants’ mentor.”Mithali is a legend,” Hemalatha said. “You can ask her anything – about the game, mindset, how to go about the match… just anything. She has all the answers. It has helped me tremendously on and off the field. She knows what my strengths are. She talks to me about plans against specific bowlers, how to hit on a specific pitch, she gives so many inputs. We discuss even during practice. Even after I come back from batting we have a proper chat.”Hemalatha expects a lot from herself. In the middle of that breakthrough series in Bangladesh, she was certain she was playing an innings that she didn’t like only to arrive in the dressing room and be celebrated for her strokeplay.”Harmanpreet [Kaur, the India captain] is a fighter, she’s very aggressive on the field” Hemalatha said. “Off the field she’s very friendly and amazing. After the second T20I, she came up to me and told me that I have beautiful shots. Only then was I convinced that I actually played well. When I came out after batting, everyone was full of praise. When I was playing, I wasn’t too satisfied. But when the team told me I played well, I got convinced.”From here, Hemalatha will be keen to take all the motivation and confidence she has gained over a career that has had plenty of highs and lows to make her spot in the India side permanent.

An opening day that was theirs to claim came crashing down as they slipped from 78 for 1 to 84 for 4

Alagappan Muthu01-Nov-2024India might somewhat justifiably believe that their struggles during this series against New Zealand were the result of circumstances coming together. The rain in Bengaluru. The toss in Pune. But the chaos in Mumbai is less easy to wish away.They were on top, picking up seven wickets for 76 runs to limit the opposition to 235, and responding to that with 78 for 1 in 17 overs on a pitch where first-innings runs will be incredibly important. Until 4.47pm on Friday, everything was going according to plan. And then, in the next five minutes, it all fell apart. Three wickets in eight legal balls, and a day that was theirs to claim was back in the balance.Related

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The Indian players in the dressing room could only look on in horror. A set batter falling to a reverse sweep with stumps approaching. A nightwatcher dismissed first ball and using up a review. A world-beater run-out going for a quick single. Morne Morkel had his head in his hands. Ravindra Jadeja didn’t have the time to react even that much.”Everything happened in ten minutes,” Jadeja said at the end of the first day’s play in Mumbai. “But it happens. It’s a team game. You cannot blame one person. Everyone makes mistakes. The next batters will have to stitch some partnership and try to get [the score] beyond 230. Only then the second innings will come into play. So it will be better if the incoming batters contribute.”New Zealand have done what few others have been able to, and hang on until the moment where the balance can shift. They showed it in Bengaluru in their first innings when Tim Southee and Rachin Ravindra added vital lower-order runs. They showed it in Pune when they toppled India from 50 for 1 to 156 all out. And they’ve shown it again, here, breaking a 53-run stand between Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal with 13 minutes to go to stumps and then topping that with the direct-hit run-out of Virat Kohli.Ajaz Patel struck twice in two balls•BCCI”You want to keep taking wickets,” Daryl Mitchell, who top-scored for New Zealand with 82, said. “It’s always nice. Look, it’s the nature of the surface and playing Test cricket over here, the ebbs and flows happen throughout the day and happy with how we hung in there while they were building a partnership, and when you get one you hopefully can get two and three.”And thats our motto, its just keep giving to the team, the way Rachin and some of the other guys chased the ball right to the boundary, that’s the stuff we always pride ourselves on. It means everyone is engaged, everyone is giving to the team, so that if we get one, hopefully we get another and its nice that it paid off tonight.”Kohli was fully kitted up when the second wicket fell, but Mohammed Siraj came out to bat instead. The nightwatcher fell first ball and burned a review trying to survive. Kohli then came in but he took on Matt Henry’s arm at mid-on and lost. Rishabh Pant came out. It was a good thing no more wickets fell because the next man in, Sarfaraz Khan, wasn’t in his whites.India have already lost this series, and are looking to avoid their first-ever home whitewash in a series of three or more Tests. They’ve been reminded of these things everywhere they’ve turned. Was their plunge into this possibly avoidable situation a sign of a team buckling under pressure? Jadeja didn’t think so.”Only the individual can tell what’s going through in his mind,” he said. “But if you are behind in the series, and such a situation comes, it feels you panicked because you are 2-0 down and committed an error. But if you are 2-0 up and the same thing happens, everyone says it happens. But if you are behind in the series, even the small things look big. Our top order has made mistakes, so the next six batters need to go close to or beyond 230. If we bat well in the first innings, things will be easier in the second.”

The India women’s batter has broken records in her first six matches, but she’s relentlessly working on herself to get even better

Shashank Kishore26-Apr-2025
Pratika Rawal, 24, smiles at the wonder of it all – wearing the India blue and sharing the dressing room with idols she once watched from behind the boundary ropes.After a heady initiation into international cricket – the 444 runs scored by her are the most by any batter in their first six innings in women’s ODIs – she’s now coming to terms with where she’s at.”It was surreal at the start,” she says, smiling, “now it feels like I belong here.”Rawal has quickly formed a strong opening partnership with Smriti Mandhana, prompting selectors to overlook Shafali Verma despite Verma’s stellar WPL 2025 performance. Now, with a tri-series against Sri Lanka and South Africa coming up, a solid run-in to the 50-over World Cup that India will host later this year, Rawal has a chance to cement her place in the team.If you watched her bat against West Indies and Ireland in 2024-25 – crisp footwork, clean strokes, an uncluttered mind – you might have assumed Rawal’s calm is second nature. But it wasn’t always this way.Related

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Her poise has been earned, over years of tireless work and small, deliberate choices: making her bed, decluttering her room, and slowing down her speech to match the pace of her thoughts.”The way you’re off the field is going to reflect how you’re going to behave on it,” she says. “I used to react a lot. I was short-tempered, I spoke very fast. But I worked on that too. I had to.”Rawal had a guiding hand in Deepti Dhyani, her coach, mentor, and unwavering anchor. “She doesn’t get enough credit,” Rawal says. “She worked on every part of me, my routines, diet, fitness, mindset. Everything.”There was a bit of technical work involved too. “Like punching the ball off the back foot, I didn’t know how to do it, I didn’t even know it was a shot when I started,” she says.Rawal credits her coach, Deepti Dhyani (left), for shaping her as a player and person•Pratika RawalAs Rawal started breaking ground in age-group cricket – she made her Delhi Under-19 debut at 14 – Dhyani also taught her how to carry herself after scoring a hundred, and how to rise again after a duck. Recently, conversations have revolved around channelling disappointment. Away from training, Rawal’s mother anchors her with her simplicity and faith. “She often says, ‘Whatever happens, happens for the best.’ And it stuck with me.”That mindset helped when Rawal wasn’t picked at the WPL auction ahead of the 2025 season. It must have hurt, especially after the high of her maiden India call-up just a day earlier. But Rawal looks at it differently. “It was an opportunity to improve. You need to have that hope. Like mom says, maybe it was all part of the plan.”Rawal began playing cricket around the time she was ten years old. Back then, she barely knew the names of players in the Indian women’s team. It wasn’t until her father told her about Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami that she began to follow the women’s game and see the possibilities. In 2017, when she watched India play at the World Cup final at Lord’s, Rawal’s motivation grew manifold.”Harry ‘s 171 in that tournament was epic, it got me even more excited. I knew I wanted to play like her,” Rawal says. Last year in Pune, she stood at training, trying to summon words in front of Harmanpreet Kaur when their paths crossed for the first time in domestic cricket. “I wanted to tell her how big a fan I was… but the only thing I managed to say was, ‘Good morning, .'”Off the field, Rawal brings her mind into the game with the help of psychology – not just as a subject, but a way of life. “One of my professors once said, ‘Psychology isn’t just about understanding others. It’s about understanding yourself.’ That hit home.”She still remembers when the former India allrounder and India women’s coach at the time, Hrishikesh Kanitkar, helped her connect the dots between a dropped head and a misjudged flick shot during a camp at the National Cricket Academy. “That’s when I realised even body language can cloud your decisions. He told me I was playing the shot perfectly in the nets, even to balls from outside off. But somehow in a match, I was lbw flicking a leg-stump half-volley.”Cricket, Rawal believes, is as much a mental game as it is physical. “If you’re nervous, your body language gives it away. Opponents can sense it. So why can’t we flip it – use our own mindset as a weapon?”She has seen that power first-hand, for instance, when she didn’t score in last year’s Senior Women’s Multi-Day Competition but then walked into a high-performance NCA camp and found resolve from Kanitkar’s critique. Or the time she stepped back from basketball – a sport she played at the national level – to give wings to her cricketing dream.Smriti Mandhana and Rawal’s 233-run opening partnership set India up for a record-breaking 304-run win over Ireland women earlier this year•BCCI”It was too much. I used to get injured – dislocated [my] shoulder and all,” she says. “My dad told me, ‘If you want to excel, you’ll have to choose.’ I chose cricket. It made me feel something different inside.”While cricket took priority, she was clear her education needed to progress in parallel. “I dropped U-19 once for my board exams,” she says. She also switched schools, moving to the well-regarded Modern School in Delhi, which she says helped develop confidence, not just in academics but as a communicator.”I wanted to be good at public speaking. I was shy. But I learnt how to express myself there.” Now that she’s done with her graduation, her parents are happy, and her coach is already nudging her towards doing a master’s in psychology.Rawal’s journey has been shaped by structure but not rigidity, as she has explored her interests and grown through the opportunities she has been given, like when she moved teams, from Delhi to Railways – a powerhouse side loaded with India players – after the 2023-24 season. Rawal saw it not as a step away from Delhi but a challenge worth embracing. “It’s hard to break into that side that is full of India players. But I like being challenged.”The first time she trialled for them in 2023-24, she wasn’t picked. So she worked harder. Scored runs. Then came the call. “When you get picked on performance, that respect, that’s what matters,” she says.Rawal remembers a semi-final in the Inter State Women’s One-Day Competition last year, when she scored a fifty for Delhi against Railways. “At the player-of-the-match ceremony, the match referee mentioned my name, and the entire Railways team hooted for me. That felt like respect.”When Rawal is not training, she’s sketching, which she says helps her focus. Or watching on repeat. Or gossiping with her mom. “I love staying at home. You’re out so much with cricket,” she says.And yes, she dreams of the World Cup. But she’s in no hurry. “I visualise things a lot – like how I celebrated my first hundred [against Ireland] by kissing the India flag. I’d seen that in my mind so many times before it happened.”Does she believe in manifestation? “Yes,” she says, without blinking. “Absolutely. Holding that World Cup trophy.”

A match-winning century sparked extraordinary scenes in March, capping a surge that propelled Jason Sangha back towards national reckoning

Deivarayan Muthu01-Sep-2025It has been five months since Jason Sangha guided South Australia to the Sheffield Shield title and sent the Karen Rolton Oval into euphoria. But his memories of the win and the celebrations, including the iconic ground invasion, are still so fresh that he was reliving it with Queensland’s Angus Lovell during dinner in Chennai, which is approximately 5000 miles away from Adelaide.Last month, Sangha was part of a group of 12 Australians who had spent in time Chennai and trained at the MRF academy, where they also played a three-day game against former Ranji Trophy champions Saurashtra.”We were talking about the win the other night and talking about how that [revelry] just wouldn’t happen at any other state,” Sangha recalls. “You know, there’s so much passion with the people from South Australia. They love their cricket, they love their AFL, but they love the cricket when the cricket season is on.Related

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“It’s the same in the AFL. Like, when the two AFL teams are playing really well, there’s a really good buzz around the city. And when South Australian cricket is doing well, or if Travis Head or Alex Carey are playing well, there’s a really big buzz around the city for cricket. If I go back home, there’s still people talking about the Shield final and we’re trying to focus on it for next season.”Sangha is gearing up for the season with his new-found ability to bat for long and score big. After chalking up six fifty-plus scores, including three centuries in 12 innings in the 2024-25 Shield, he made a career-best 202 not out off 379 balls in his most recent first-class fixture for Australia A against Sri Lanka A in Darwin in July. Sangha puts his stellar run down to taking emotions out of his game and thinking clearly.”I’m just a lot more level-headed than I probably would have been,” he says. “Whether I’m playing club cricket, if I’m playing state cricket, A-team cricket, even over here [in Chennai], I just want to keep having those good habits, keep being consistent with how I train, how I play, rather than sort of being checked in and checked out or being really intense and then dropping off and not batting for a while.”So it’s just having a more of a level-headed approach, being more consistent, and look, if that leads to higher honours, that’s great. But at the same time, if I’m scoring runs in every game that I’m playing and I’m putting my best foot forward, then I can live with the result.”Jason Sangha’s career has been revived by his move to South Australia•Getty ImagesSangha has certainly strengthened his Test credentials with his recent double-hundred against Sri Lanka A but doesn’t want to look too far ahead.”Yeah, I mean, every kid’s dream is to obviously play for Australia,” Sangha says. “That’s the pinnacle of how good you are as a cricketer – to play for Australia. And no doubt I’d love to do it as well. But I think I’m just really content with where my game is at right now. I’ve probably been trying to sort of figure out a method to have some sort of consistency.”Having batted on different surfaces in Chennai, including red and black soils, Sangha hopes to tap into that experience when he returns to the subcontinent. With some players set to come back to India for an A tour later this year and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy to follow in 2027, this trip to Chennai was particularly significant for the Australia hopefuls such as Sangha himself.