Yash Thakur: A story ready for the take-off

April 02, 2011 

Yash Thakur saw India lifting the ODI World Cup. He saw how the tournament’s narrative revolved around winning it for Sachin Tendulkar. 

At that point, all that 11-year-old boy wished for was to be there at the Wankhede on the second day of April. He dreamt with open eyes about lifting the trophy with his own hands and feeling the hype of Tendulkar’s last World Cup by being there with the Kohlis and Dhonis. 

April 7, 2024

The first innings of the match between Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) and the Gujarat Titans (GT) was done. LSG had scored 163/5, and GT were on to a rollicking start, with Shubman Gill and Sai Sudharsan scoring 54 in the first 35 balls of the game. Things were as smooth as Lucknow’s famous winter dessert Makkhan Malai for the Titans, and the chase looked straightforward from there on. After all, GT’s batting order was completely suited for such a chase. 

Enters Yash Thakur in the last over of the powerplay.

The off-side was completely packed for Gill, with the two permissible fielders manning the leg side boundary. Gill had already hit a boundary off a hard length delivery on the second ball of the over by making room and threading the off-side field. He tried to make room again on the fifth ball but couldn’t beat the extra cover fielder. 

The next delivery was cross seamed, but it was full, bowled fast at 142.4 kmph, and bang on the money. It angled in, pitched full, hit Gill on his pads as he tried to make room once again on the off-side and ricocheted off to crash into the woodwork behind him. 

Set up. Execution. Patience. Skill. And a sucker punch of a ball. 

Yash cleaned up Gill and broke the back of GT’s chase by getting their best batter out. No wonder when asked which wicket he liked the most during the post-match presentation, he said, "Shubman’s." 

So far in his IPL career, he has bowled only seven overs in the powerplay out of the 42.4 he has bowled so far. But for his state side, Vidarbha, he began as a new ball bowler when he first arrived. Later on, he moulded himself into a death ball bowler because that’s what Vidarbha needed him to do. 

That allowed him to possess a multitude of skills at just 25 years of age. From moving the ball both ways off the pitch to swinging it in the air, from bowling yorkers to slower bouncers - you name the skill, and chances are that the big speedster would have it in his arsenal already. 

Hence, what followed when he came on to bowl after Gill’s wicket wasn’t a surprise. He was picked in the auction by the Super Giants for this very role. Anyways, a brilliant effort from Lucknow’s spinners, who bowled ten overs for stellar figures of 4/48, had broken the back of GT’s chase. 

When Yash came for his second spell, he not only broke the back of the chase further. He decapitated it. 

He deceived Vijay Shankar with a slower, wide bouncer. Shankar was early into the shot, and he could only gently feather it to Rahul. Yash spread his arms and held them aloft after that, maybe in anticipation of the wickets falling in his lap. 

His next victim was Rashid Khan, and his wicket fell in his lap just as anticipated. Yash again bowled a change up, a slower one, on a hard length, and Rashid tried to smack it to Ayodhya from Lucknow. Of course, he couldn’t do that, as his shot didn’t even go past the 30-yard circle and was caught at mid-off. His next two wickets also came on sharp short balls that he banged into the pitch, and Rahul Tewatia and Noor Ahmed made futile attempts to muscle them. 

At this point, it’s worth noting how he relied on stealthy change-ups in speeds quite a bit after the powerplay. Still, during the powerplay, he relied on pace-on deliveries, showing a penchant for adaptability and the abundance of skills he possesses. 

He saw Umesh Yadav bowl in the powerplay in the first innings and get seam movement. He saw him get two wickets from a back of a length. He saw the slower bowlers get some good grip on the pitch. 

Hence, he decided to bowl pace up when he bowled in the powerplay but switched to change-ups and banging the ball in the pitch on a short and hard length later in the game while trying out his variations. 

The boy who started his cricket career with the hopes of one day feeling the atmosphere after winning a World Cup final had just got a five-wicket haul in front of a packed stadium in the biggest cricket league.

However, it took him 13 years to reach here. Thirteen years of hard work that his coach, Praveen Hinganikar, made him do, apart from him being groomed as an understudy of Umesh in the Vidarbha setup when he joined them. It took Umesh’s encouragement and then an absolutely crazy bowling average (14.4), economy (6.7) and strike rate (12.9) for Vidarbha in the T20s for him to get noticed and picked by an IPL team. 

It wasn’t a small journey. But what that journey did today was it allowed LSG to maintain their excellent record while defending a total despite being a pacer down (Mayank Yadav). 

One hopes that he would have felt the atmosphere at Ekana Stadium today when thousands and thousands of LSG fans were cheering for him because one thing is certain from here. The plane called Yash Thakur has done the taxi. It’s on the runway. 

However, can the guys sitting above at the Air Traffic Control chart a clear path for the 25-year-old pacer or not? 

That remains to be seen, as his story has just gotten ready for the take-off.

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