Shane Warne, the cricket legend, is known as a person who impacted Australian cricket; his influence, though, extended far into Indian cricket too. In a crucial moment in his career, India’s spinner Piyush Chawla revealed that he had gotten some important advice from the latter. When he was still young and an upcoming leg-spinner.
In 2008 at only 18 years old Piyush Chawla already had international success under his belt for being part of India’s 2007 T20 World Cup-winning squad. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy to adjust to IPL cricket.
Chawla made his debut match for Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings) against Chennai Super Kings. Chawla found himself broken after this match because he was hit for 20 runs in just one over by Michael Hussey. Who scored a century.
This meant that only within a few overs of the game starting his confidence was completely shattered. Reflecting on this difficult period. Chawla shared his experience on the 2 Sloggers podcast: “Our first match was against CSK and they scored some 230-odd runs. I bowled one over and got smashed for 20 runs. Just got one over. I thought ‘It’s ok. ‘What’s done is done’. We reached Jaipur for the second match against Rajasthan Royals. We batted first and I scored some 24 runs off 11-12 balls. When I came to bowl, I conceded 30 in 2 overs. I went to my room and thought ‘This T20 cricket is not my cup of tea’. I was eighteen years old at that time and quite worried.”
Yuvraj Singh as captain took goes further than language barriers by setting up a meeting between Chawla and Shane Warne at this key juncture in their lives. This interaction had profound effects on how Chawla saw things about life and his cricket.
“Yuvraj came up and he made me meet the legendry Shane Warne. I went to his room and started speaking. English I wasn’t able to speak much and the one with an accent couldn’t understand much. But I understood whatever little I could. After 40 minutes, I left his room and I’m not kidding but I felt there is no bowler better than me. He said so many things to me and made me understand the little things about cricket,” Chawla recalled.
Chawla was rejuvenated by Warne’s advice. In just his next match, Chawla showed what he can do by taking figures of 2/19. This performance marks the start of a very successful career in IPL.
Now, seventeen years later, Piyush Chawla has become a veteran of the IPL with over 192 wickets to his name during this time.
