Lucknow Super Fast

MAYANK YADAV IS at the top of his bowling mark.

In the future and possibly for the rest of his bowling life, this simple act of Yadav standing a run-up length away from the popping crease and in the throes of for­ward movement will tend to cause breath-holding and goose pimples and surges of adrenaline, not only in the batsman but the watching crowd as well, be it the spectators at the ground or viewers on TV. That much he has already guaranteed.

But tonight, just past dusk on March 30 at the Ekana in Lucknow, as he waits to be released by the umpire’s outstretched arm to bowl his first ball, there’s only a casual murmur from the densely-packed stands; for, outside of his teammates and coaching staff at Lucknow Super Giants—whom he has never represented before—only a few men of the deeply-embedded-in-Delhi’s-do­mestic-circuit kind have even heard of this boy.

For the wider world, he’s a complete unknown, all of 21 and totally inexperienced, making his IPL debut as Lucknow’s sixth bowler, brought on to bowl the 10th over of a chase that has Punjab Kings at 88 for no loss, and well on their way to toppling LSG’s score of 199/8. We’ve seen this tape play out a thousand times: earnest kid, bright lights, big stage, a ripple of hope that’ll even­tually crash against the rock of reality. A harsh reality: before Yadav has even bowled a ball, 287 runs have been scored at the Ekana in 29 overs. What can he do that South Africa’s great fast bowler Kagiso Rabada (38 runs from 4 overs), or India’s wily T20 specialist Harshal Patel (45 runs from 4 overs) couldn’t in the first innings? What can he do that his LSG teammate, Afghanistan’s spearhead Naveen-ul-Haq (17 runs from 2 overs), can’t yet in the second? What’s so special about him?

Then, from the top of his mark, he runs in to bowl.

The first ball from Yadav is a thunderbolt, recordedat147.1kmph, and it whumps into the gloves of wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock. Jonny Bairstow, the batsman between them, is simply a bystander. Bairstow had tried to cut the back-of-a-length delivery, but the ball fizzed past his outside edge. The third ball is even quicker, 150kmph, skidding from a length and whooshing past the inside edge of Bairstow’s bat. The man from England is batting on a quickfire 41 and has recently completed 100 Test matches for his country, but even he is utterly clueless against this bowling. Yadav’s first over in IPL ends with him conceding a couple of boundaries, but no one playing or watching seems to care about that, for he has pace. Raw pace. And in cricket, through its long history, the revelation of a genuine fast bowler borders on the profound.

The next time Yadav is at the top of his mark, in the 12th over, there’s a buzz that feels like electricity, flowing through the field and stands of Lucknow, and of course over countless sofa sets across the country. Now, we all notice everything about him: the run-up of 15-16 skiddy steps, the vertical rise of his non-bowling arm during the load-up followed by the whipping release that gets the ball to smash into the deck with a beastly thump. First ball of this over, Yadav has released fire. Clocking 155.8kmph, the fastest ball by a lot at this IPL, it screams past the blade of Shikhar Dhawan, batting on 59. Two balls later, he rushes Bairstow for speed with a shortish ball, and the mistimed pull is caught at midwicket. The sixth-change bowling debutant has made his team’s first breakthrough, Punjab now 102/1, still seem­ingly in command of the chase. Not for long.

The turnaround occurs in the proverbial flash. The big-hitting Prabhsimran Singh is welcomed to the crease with a scorcher measuring 153.1kmph. Then, in Yadav’s third over, Prabhsimran is dismissed with a 147.2kmph bouncer (very quick for a short one) that beats him for pace, his attempted pull caught inside the ring at mid-on. The fourth and final over of Yadav’s spell, on average, is faster than all the rest. Dhawan uses the pace of a 154 kmph ball to get away from the strike, exposing Jitesh Sharma, who, like those before him, holes out to a nasty rearing ball. He has now taken each of LSG’s three wickets (3/27) and is named Man of the Match after Lucknow win a few overs later, the only bowler in the entire high-scoring game to go at under 7 runs an over. Just like that, life as Yadav knew it and the landscape of cricket as we knew it has both changed forever.

Bowling at a serious pace simply has no equivalents in the global expanse of ball games. A big server in tennis can chalk up his ace count, sure, but cannot hurt anyone with a technique. Neither can a pitcher in baseball, for the rules state that he cannot intentionally aim for the batter’s body, certainly not his face. No such safeguards in cricket, where a helmet and one’s ability to sway or duck in the nick of time are all the defences a batsman has in this routine dance between life and death while facing a genuine fast bowler. Master­ful spin bowling or artful batting is appreciated from afar, while a tearaway quick doing his thing draws you in, makes it emotional, and forces the viewer to feel what it feels like to be in the shoes of the hunted. In that sense, it can only be compared with a bullfight or boxing, both far from the realm of ball games.

Which is perhaps why a bowler who can release the ball at real, life-threatening speeds of over 150kmph—the threshold for veritable pace—consistently, often ends up with a reputation and an aura far bigger than his statistics and numbers. Which is also why when a new one comes along because they do so very infrequently, the cricket world sits up and takes notice. Minutes after Yadav’s debut performance, South Africa’s Dale Steyn, as fast as they once came, posted on X: “Mayank Yadav where have you been hiding!” Another member of this rarest tribe, Australia’s Brett Lee, wasted no time in saying it as it is: “India has just found its fastest bowler. Mayank Yadav! Raw pace. Very impressive.”

Sure. Despite a steady shift in India’s fast bowling fortunes in the last decade or so, the country never really did have anyone who could bowl at 150-plus ball after ball—Javagal Srinath, Ashish Nehra, Varun Aaron, Jasprit Bumrah, and recently, Umran Malik, all breached the mark only occasionally. Extreme pace is such a force of nature that it doesn’t require a speed gun to recognise it. One simply knows it when one sees it, which is why when the former India and Delhi wicketkeeper Vijay Dahiya first witnessed Yadav’s talent from afar, he knew he had a phone call to make. The story traces back to Mohali in 2021, a day before a teenage Yadav was to make his List-A debut for his state, Delhi, in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. It so happened that Delhi and Uttar Pradesh were practising side by side, and Dahiya, UP’s coach at the time, was also associated with LSG in IPL. So, he informed Gautam Gambhir, then Lucknow’s head coach, and Yadav was bid for at the auction by the franchise, at his base price, for the 2022 season.

The merits of long-term planning, then. For, Yadav simply wasn’t ready to play for LSG in 2022 and for IPL 2023, when he perhaps was, he was out injured—as most genuine quicks are at several points of their careers. It’s just the nature of their business. But in the second game of Lucknow’s campaign, their investment and his meaning would both reveal their collective worth. Yadav had said in an interview that the evening before the game against Punjab Kings, LSG captain KL Rahul personally knocked on his room door to inform him that he would be making his debut; and that he should focus on his real strength, which is pace, and not worry too much about conceding runs. It will be fair to assume that before the next match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru on April 2, he wouldn’t have needed anyone informing him of his presence in Lucknow’s playing eleven.

“More than the victory last game, everyone was talking about Mayank Yadav’s pace,” a smiling Rahul said, after losing the toss at Bengaluru’s Chinnaswamy Stadium, the sternest test for bowlers in the IPL with its short boundaries and high altitude, which helps the hits carry even further. So much further that when Lucknow’s Nicholas Pooran went aerial against RCB’s premier pacer Reece Topley in the penultimate over of the target-setting innings, the ball simply vanished beyond the rafters of the stadium, osten­sibly landing somewhere in nearby Cubbon Park. But that wasn’t even the best, or second best, six of that over: those would be Pooran’s twin cut shots that flew over point and into the stands. In the last two overs alone, LSG scored five sixes to get to 181. “I was worried the total wasn’t enough,” de Kock would later say, which puts into immediate perspective just how notoriously difficult this particular ground is for bowlers.

This, then, was young Yadav’s second straight examination in a row, perhaps even a notch tougher than keeping his nerves at bay on debut. But who was going to tell him that? There he stood again, at the top of his mark in the sixth over of the chase, with his Johnny Bravo hairdo, stubble on chin, gold chain around his neck, and blue shirt untucked at the waist, waiting to bowl at RCB’s captain Faf du Plessis. He skidded into his run and his very first delivery clattered into the bat at 153.2kmph, possibly stunning du Plessis into attempting a single that did not exist and causing his run out. In came the dangerous Glenn Maxwell and back he went for a duck in the space of two balls, succumbing to a Mayank Yadav special: a 151kmph bouncer that got big on his pull shot, just like it did on all those Punjab batters.

But tonight, only his second on the big stage if anyone needed reminding, Yadav was going to somehow better himself from the first one, both in pace and performance. In his second over, he uprooted Cameron Green’s off stump with a ball that practically emerged with flames on it. Smouldering in at 156.7kmph, this was the new fastest delivery at this IPL and the fourth-quickest in the tournament’s 17-year history, inching ever so close to the mythical 160kmph (or 100 miles an hour) mark.

When he got rid of Rajat Patidar in his final over (also top-edging a bouncer), Yadav finished with figures of 3/14, his second three-for giving him a second Man of the Match award and leaving an entire sport unified in their craving for more. And what gets better than two trophies and six wickets in an IPL career spanning a total of four days? Only the anticipation of Yadav’s next ball, of course.

BengaluruCameron GreencricketIPL 2024Lucknow Super GiantsMayank YadavRCB