cricket

Updated: Nov 11, 2019 22:02 IST

After entering the domestic circuit as an 18-year-old with an eight-wicket innings haul that helped Rajasthan skittle out Hyderabad for 21, Deepak Chahar had his future marked as swing bowler. He had picked 40 wickets in his debut first-class season (2010-11). A couple of years later however, Deepak, who was trained by his father in a small Rajasthan town of Suratgarh, lost his most important asset. He struggled to swing, suffered a spate of injuries and later even changed his action.

Inconsistencies crept in as Deepak couldn’t make the state team regularly. Rajasthan’s bowling attack was now being led by Pankaj Singh, the tall pace bowler who even toured overseas with the India team. But life often takes strange twists and turns. Pankaj eventually lost his place and slipped to Puducherry, a Ranji Trophy Plate Group (lowest tier) team. Meanwhile, Deepak catapulted himself into the India team riding success in the Indian Premier League.

READ | Deepak Chahar reveals conversation with Rohit Sharma before record-breaking performance in Nagpur T20I

After a couple of years with Rising Pune Supergiant, where he did more work in the nets than on the field, he moved with MS Dhoni and Stephen Fleming to the returning Chennai Super Kings where he bloomed into a bowler who depended on swing as well as variations. It was this quality that fuelled his success in the T20 series against Bangladesh in the absence of the likes of Jasprit Bumrah. Deepak repaid the faith on Sunday, scalping 6/7, a T20 International record. “The plan was that I would get the responsibility of bowling the main overs,” he said after the match. “Usually I bowl with the new ball, but Rohit bhai said I’ll bowl the crucial overs today, whenever the team needed me to bowl.”

Deepak’s spell was split into three—third over, then 13th over before bowling the 18th and 20th overs. He took two wickets in the first, came back to take one in the 13th and then a hattrick spread over the last two. Not many days back Deepak without swing would be a man lost, leaking runs. But now, he seems up to scratch.

“The idea was to make them play on the side, as the side boundaries are big. I wanted to vary the pace. The ball was wet, it was difficult. But playing in Chennai regularly, I have got used to it. Because there is so much dew and you sweat so much, you know how to clean your hands and use clay on the ball. So playing in Chennai has helped me,” Deepak said in an interview on bcci.tv. Deepak’s cousin Rahul, a spinner who played a T20 for India in August, explains further, attributing his newfound skills to IPL.

“In the beginning, his slower and knuckle balls weren’t that good. But the experience in IPL, where he has done well for two years (10 wickets in 2018 and 22 wickets in 2019) is the reason why he is able to read the batsmen. He can bowl whatever he wants to—slower, faster, length, slow bouncer,” he said in an interview.

“How it helps is that before every IPL game, there are meetings where you decide what ball to bowl to which batsman. Somewhere, somehow, Dhoni bhaiyya always trusted him when he played for Pune; he saw in him a bowler who can swing in Powerplay and who can bat. It helped a lot.”

READ | After Nagpur heroics, Deepak Chahar jumps 88 places to break into top 50 in T20I Rankings

The leg-spinner adds that years of struggle have made Deepak a tough nut to crack. “If you are 19-20 and keep getting things on your plate, you get satisfied. This wasn’t the case with Deepak. Things were so bad 2-3 years ago that, even in Ranji he’d play one game in eight, he struggled a lot. He worked hard so much, so all this doesn’t affect him. He has got a lot of confidence.”

Deepak’s struggles had begun early with his father Lokendra quitting his job—instead of shifting to south India—to ensure his son got to play for Rajasthan. In a July interview, Lokendra had explained his training methods during Deepak’s early years. “The most important thing (coaching him) was swing. I made him bowl 500 deliveries (standing at the crease, rather than run in, to ensure he used his wrists to bowl),” he said.

After leaving his job, they shifted to Agra. Fitness too was never compromised. Navendu Tyagi, a secretary at the Hanumangarh district body and the man who took Deepak under his wings took extra care of that while inviting him to play and train in Hanumangarh. Even in Agra, he and Rahul were made to do tough rudimentary exercises like running up and down the steps of a large water tank (50-60 feet deep), tyre-pulling, cycling and chopping wood with a heavy axe (simulating the bowling action) among other things