Searching for the turning point

Jayant Yadav recently took a six-four and hit a hundred against Karnataka in the Ranji Trophy.

The Delhi heat is burning up the tar, and a little boy is trudging along with a heavy cricket kit bag towards the bus stop, a long walk from home. “Beta chhodo na, kahan garmi mein jaa rahe ho?” he would hear an “aunty’s” voice now and then on those solitary walks. That lady now tells his mother, “Mein to aise bolti thi, now to he’s doing well, acchi baat hai!” Jayant Yadav smiles as he dips into a bit of nostalgia.

Yadav is at a fascinating stage in his career. Things can either turn magical or a dream can go sour from here on, and that is vulnerable, hopeful, innocent, and exciting. No stranger recognises him as a cricketer on road as yet, apart from the neighbourhood aunties of course. But there is this promise of a good future ahead of him, and he knows it. He has had a good few years at Ranji Trophy, has taken 33 wickets this season at the best strike rate (32.2) among all bowlers, has played three IPL games, couple of “Tests” for India A, and is now set to represent the A team again against South Africa in a two-day game in Mumbai on Friday.

There are three spinners in the India A squad, two of whom we already have a good idea about. The leg-spinner Karn Sharma, who played a Test for India, and Kuldeep Yadav, the 20-year-old chinaman bowler who has had an impressive record in junior cricket. This is about the third one.

There is a murmur of goodwill about Yadav; and amidst a drought of decent young spinners in the country, this 25-year old’s name bubbles up in conversations in cricketing circles these days. His Haryana state team coach Surendra Bhave, and former national selector, terms him a “superb cricketer, a talent to watch out for”.

And so, it’s just not his cricket that will play out in front of our eyes soon but his past, his dreams, and his thought process that interested when we sat down for a chat in a plush hotel room. It’s because of cricket that he found himself waking up in a well-made bed in a five-star hotel for the first time. “Everything was so shiny, so perfect. The floors were so spic-span, you could see your face on it! Then as the season went on, I got more habitual to all that.”

Chats like this aren’t the best way to assess a cricketer but something of the personality does peep through. Yadav seems to be a self-aware individual, a trait that Bhave vouches for, there is earnestness that comes with this stage of his career, and also couple of mannerisms come through — an almost constant cluck of the tongue when he speaks, and the finger tapping on the jaw when he is thinking about something. He seems to revel when the talk turns to cricket. Often it’s him who veers the conversation in that direction. You can see why he is already getting a reputation of being an over-thinker in cricketing fraternity. If you don’t think about your game at this point, then when?

“I like to optimise side spin and top spin as a spinner. Only side spin would mean there won’t be much bounce and only top would mean no great turn. I like to use my natural height for the bounce, and really like to turn the ball. There are days when I get a good feeling about my bowling. I know that today is going to be my day; it’s just the way the ball comes out of my hand. I love that.”

He talks about how he constantly thinking about the game, how on occasions when he comes back to the hotel rooms, he finds himself running up and bowl in the hotel rooms, beside the plush bed and the clean floors that once caught his eye so dramatically. I need to learn to switch off more and I am getting better at it, slowly!”

The innocence pops out in those moments as well. Like when he is talking about bowling to Quinton de Kock in the A series. He was thrashed in the first game and next game, as he was on the field before he could get to bowl, he was thinking, “Can this Quinton fellow get out please?!” More seriously though, he says he was thinking about fulfilling his team’s wish that as an offie, he would be best placed to remove de Kock. And he got him twice in that “Test”. “Stumped in the first innings, and then got caught of a top edge,” a charming smile spread out his lips.

His family too is beginning to change around his growth as a cricketer. Where previously his dad, a manager of in-flight service at Air India, would call and say, “Beta kya haal hai? Theek hai?”, now the calls have turned more nervy. “Beta kya ho raha hai, wicket nahi mil raha hai?”

“It’s really sweet,” Jayant laughs.

Mother who once told him to come back after two days, in a first-class game, for some family event and had to be told that it’s a four-day event, is now getting not necessarily cricket savvy but happier and more hopeful. His sisters — one works in an advertsing agency and the younger is at school, the same DPS Vasant Kunj that he went to — prod him with shopping lists when he is on tour.

Bhave, Haryana’s coach, talks about the day they sent him as a nightwatchman earlier this season on a turner in Rajkot. “He came back with a superb hundred on that pitch. He is growing as a batsman, and even in the last game, he hit a hundred alongside Sehwag in Mysore. And I am so glad to say that his bowling is really coming along nicely. Superb talent, and if he continues to grow and be as passionate as he is now, we might have a real good cricketer in our hands.”

An Ashwin fan

Yadav admires R Ashwin’s mind, how he outsmarts the batsmen, and is in touch with him on and off. For his part, Ashwin has been sending encouraging text messages after good Ranji performances.

It feels apt to end with a memory from that Sehwag game. “He was singing a song, and for two overs I was thinking, bhai galat ga rahen hai! He comes and says, yaar saala gaana theek sey nahi aa raha, what are the first two lines? It was the song Tu jaane na… from the movie Ajab Prem ki Gajab Kahani. I told him and he went back to singing That will stick in my mind!”

Hopefully, more cricketing memories will emerge in the future but the here and now is a time to use that hotel wi-fi and download more movies and TV shows, from where he says he learnt his English. Not bad a medium to learn then for he uses words like “inherent” in spoken language. He is all set to watch Robin Williams’ Patch Adams, and download episodes of ‘Narcos’, the new TV show about the notorious Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar. “I hope the wi-fi is real good here”.