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After his impressive Test debut at Perth’s Optus Stadium, the 21-year-old is being touted as a ‘rare’ bowling allrounder for India
HYDERABAD: India’s summer in Australia has gotten off on a surprisingly high note. What was being forecast as a tour without end, where the team would be forever looking lost and groping for answers, writing epitaphs for those careers cruelly ended, it instead culminated in a famous 295-run hammering of the home side in Perth.
Border-Gavaskar Trophy
Have those dark pre-departure clouds suddenly disappeared, taking all the doubt with it? As the team lines up in Canberra in preparation of the pink-ball Test (in Adelaide, from Dec 6), there now emerges a scenario which you wouldn’t exactly call a problem of plenty, but a situation any team would be happy to be in. Whom to drop, who to fit in, whom to shuffle up or down the order – all since regular captain Rohit Sharma has returned and staked claim to his spot.
Suddenly, Team India has options. And in all this, there’s Nitish Reddy, a 21-year-old allrounder whose stock has risen faster than the Australians can master saying Visakhapatnam. It took a little over a month from the Andhra boy’s heady 34-ball 74 in the T20I against Bangladesh in Delhi to making his Test debut in Perth. Suddenly, he’s being touted as a ‘rare’ bowling allrounder for India.
Nitish acquitted himself well in Perth – top scorer with 41 in India’s first innings – and came in for praise from stand-in skipper Jasprit Bumrah for his fearless attitude. “If you are scared, then your fear will not go away. So, that is a very positive sign that they are not afraid,” he said of debutants Nitish and Harshit Rana. As India flexes on this tour Down Under, the mantle of the fast-bowling allrounder gains importance and so does Nitish’s role.
Nitish carries shades of the Hardik Pandya template that he would love to emulate and yet avoid at the same time. Hardik’s initial brilliance both with bat and ball was a captain’s dream, but he seemed to lack the hunger to keep it going once things got tougher with injuries creeping in. Just 11 Tests old, while he played a brief but crucial role in India becoming this spunky Test unit, injuries and a general disinterest in pursuing the red-ball game meant that Pandya was a promise cut short.
To repose faith in the team management, Nitish needs to work on his bowling. “With regards to his batting, there is no doubt he is there. He is a brilliant fielder as well. I feel he is an all-format player,” MSK Prasad told TOI from the US, adding, “In bowling, he must improve…”
Nitish seemed to be aware of this, when he spoke with the excitement of a teenager about the pitches in Australia. “When I am practising my bowling, I am just enjoying the bounce the ball’s getting here (Down Under) and adjusting accordingly. Hitting that five-six metre length is quite good in Australia, as back in India you need to hit that six-metre length for good length balls,” he had said as member of the India A side, prior to the tour game in Mackay.
Prasad, the former India chief selector, can take some credit for Nitish’s rise. Few had heard of the cricketer before his Delhi T20I innings.
It’s a long way from the ACA-VDCA Academy in Visakhapatnam, where Nitish started playing at the age of six. “We used to travel 30 km from Gajuwaka to Port Stadium at 5 am each day. It was possible because of my wife Manasa who used to get everything ready before time. She supported us despite not knowing anything about the game,” remembered father, Mutyala Reddy.
The sacrifices have yielded fruit, and the new calling card is a far cry from the look a worried father sported when he escorted Nitish to an awards ceremony in Hyderabad. It was here that Nitish was adjudged the Most Promising Youngster in 2018-19, and the seeds for the future were sown.
Reddy senior also credited Prasad, who enrolled Nitish in the Andhra Cricket Association’s (ACA) U-14 academy in Kadapa, where he was overseen by coaches Madhusudan Reddy and N. Srinivasa Rao. “We used to visit him regularly when he was in Kadapa, but once he started performing consistently, he was moved to Vizianagaram, where coaches CD Thomson and Vikram played a key role,” remembered Mutyala.
“I am happy that I could spot him at a very young age,” said Prasad, “He was fast-tracked and the role he was given, he did it to perfection. The selectors and team management reposed faith in him and he delivered. He never looked like he was playing his first match,” he added. Prasad expressed happiness that the ACA academies have started yielding fruit in men’s cricket.
Nitish’s father had to leave a steady job with Hindustan Zinc Ltd. in Visakhapatnam as he was transferred to Udaipur. Instead, he heeded the call of coaches Kangani Kumaraswamy and A Krishna Rao as it would’ve affected Nitish’s training. He opted for early retirement instead. “We struggled financially after I left the job. It was tough to manage the family. We sailed through with our savings, but we made sure Nitish got all the support,” he told TOI. Maybe it is that struggle that gives Nitish the fearlessness, the one that Bumrah noticed and appreciated.
Nitish aggregated 1,237 in the Vijay Merchant Trophy in 2017-18 – the highest that season. It got him the BCCI’s best U-16 cricketer award.
Covid-19 was a dampener, though. Nitish did not make any state team in 2019. But he did not stop training.
Chennai Super Kings took him as a net bowler for the IPL season 2021 and the following year, he was acquired by Sunrisers Hyderabad. He had a breakthrough season with last year’s runners-up SRH. With 303 runs, including two fifties, he won the Emerging Player of the year award and was named in the Indian T20 team for the tour of Zimbabwe.
However, a niggle made sure it was not to be. But he made the opportunity count when handed the India cap in the T20I series against Bangladesh earlier this season. The rest, we know, how it all unfolded.
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