They turn architect into spin bowler, a village boy into Rs 10.75 cr fee pacer

In 2011, Varun Chakravarthy gave up being a fast bowler and became an architect. Then, four years later, on a whim, he turned up at a random nets session as a mystery spinner. A batchmate-turned-IPL scout noticed him and persuaded Chakravarthy to be a part of the Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL). Two seasons later, he was picked up by Kings XI Punjab — now known as Punjab Kings — for an unbelievable Rs 8.4 cr. In another three years, he was representing India in a T20 World Cup. medium115598584 The Indian Premier League (IPL) is now one of the top sporting leagues in the world, and a lot of that success is owed to the ability of its franchises to dip into an ever-expanding domestic talent pool.The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has gone global with brand IPL, hosting auctions around the world while simultaneously branching out to the far corners of the country in their quest to diversify talent reserves. Defying conventional selection norms has brought sweet reward, with a total of 366 Indian cricketers going under the hammer in the two-day IPL mega auction in Jeddah on November 24 and Nov 25.Like Chakravarthy, who was retained by Kolkata Knight Riders for Rs 12 cr ahead of IPLS 2025, there are many examples of quirky but extremely successful selection picks.Take the case of T Natarajan. With minimal exposure to formal cricket and a hand-to-mouth lifestyle in a village called Chinnappampatti in Salem till 2016, he was picked up by Kings XI a year later for Rs 3 cr based on his TNPL performance. By January 2021, Natarajan was playing a key role in India’s historic win at the Gabba. And on November 24, he was bought by IPL team Delhi Capitals for Rs 10.75 cr for the 2024 season. medium115598658 Going a little further back, Karnal’s Navdeep Saini turned up at the Delhi Ranji Trophy team’s nets in 2013 at the behest of former Delhi and Kolkata Knight Riders allrounder Sumit Narwal. He had not had any formal coaching till then. Owning a pair of bowling shoes was a distant dream. But his talent impressed now-India-coach Gautam Gambhir so much, he decided to hand Saini a Ranji Trophy debut a week later. Saini too was part of that famous Gabba heist. Cut to IPL 2023. An engineer and a hobby tennis-ball cricketer from Roorkee — Akash Madhwal — became a sensation when he filled a Jasprit Bumrah-sized void in the Mumbai Indians camp, becoming captain Rohit Sharma’s go-to man in the death overs. Such stories are at the core of the T20 format’s widening appeal. India’s T20 World Cup-winning coach Rahul Dravid summed it up aptly recently, saying, “Indian cricket today is extremely strong and powerful. One of the big reasons for that is that talent comes from everywhere, from all over the country.” “If you go back to the time of, say, Gundappa Viswanath, or even when I was starting out, most of the talent came from the big cities or from a handful of other states. Even if they were talented boys in smaller places, they had to come to the big cities to play cricket. But today, in Indian cricket, the boys are coming from everywhere, Dravid added. medium115645656 It was actually long before the IPL, in the early 2000s, that India’s selectors first began tapping into raw talent from across the country. Subsequently, the IPL offered a level-playing field for players outside the regular cricketing power centres. Now, the gap between an IPL player and an India cricketer — in terms of both skill and financial reward — has narrowed significantly. Talent hunting is a fascinating process but for a cricketer, pursuing sport as a full-time career used to be difficult. It is here that the BCCI’s domestic structure has played a vital role. Indian cricket’s domestic season for 2024-25 got underway in the first week of September, with the Duleep Trophy. That marked the beginning of a six-month season in which the BCCI will host approximately 2200 matches across age groups and genders. The sheer number of matches is a reflection of the enormity of the task, given the country’s size. World cricket raves about India’s talent pool and envies its financial strength. The system, in turn, needs to throw up a big star or two every year. BCCI and IPL franchises have come together to form a system that seamlessly taps into the remotest regions. Roorkee boy Rishabh Pant, Moradabad’s Mohammed Shami, Natarajan, Saini and Khaleel Ahmed from Tonk in Rajasthan are just a few examples. medium115645757 Creating a database Former India bowling coach Paras Mhambrey, Dravid’s trusted lieutenant since he took over as the caretaker of India ‘A’, U-19s and the National Cricket Academy in 2015, says data has played a crucial role in this process. “Creating a database was a major challenge. To get what the boys have been doing in their home states was a huge task. We used to run around and ask state associations to create a database of their cricketing performances,” Mhambrey said, recalling the early days of working with Dravid. “Currently, the BCCI has a huge backroom where you get all kinds of data about a player. You can find out how a player has come up the ranks, what his fitness routines are, how he has been performing round the year. You have footage of each ball bowled,” a proud Mhambrey said. Streamlining the process over the last decade was an arduous task. It became tougher for the national selectors when a Supreme Court-appointed panel asked BCCI to amend the constitution and prune the selection committee from a five-member body to a three-member one in 2017. Although the ruling was reversed in 2018, one of the best ideas popped up during this period. MSK Prasad, chairman of selectors at that time, said, “In 2017, we decided to get the help of match referees in domestic cricket across the country. We had given them a template and certain criteria to look at. They would mark and describe those parameters and send them to us at the end of the match. We went through all the reports and accordingly assigned selectors to follow those players. Our focus was on the impact the players could have on a game and not their numbers. These boys from suburbs and small towns are fearless,” Prasad added. medium115645933 Enter the IPL talent scouts IPL franchises too played a big part in spotting talent. Their scouting teams reached places where BCCI’s regular selectors could not. Tanmay Shrivastava, a part of Virat Kohli’s U-19 World Cup-winning team in 2008, is now retired. He served as a scout for Royal Challengers Bengaluru before becoming an umpire. “Network building is a huge part of the exercise,” he said. “There are franchises who rely on match referees, umpires and curators at various levels for tip-offs. As scouts, we were divided in groups and then told to spread out all over the country. We tried to cover every tournament that was played. I am an umpire now. But when I go out to officiate local matches, I am always on the lookout for talent and refer to scouts I know,” Shrivastava said. Mhambrey agrees selection patterns have changed since his playing days, and that the IPL has played a major role in it. Former India opener and Bengal stalwart Devang Gandhi too has seen a change of attitude when he joined Prasad in his selection panel before taking up a job with Bengal U-19s. “There is a drastic change in the outlook. For example, cricket in Bengal is no longer Kolkata centric. During my time as national selector, I observed the same in other states. The talent that comes through is based on the potential they have and not purely on performance,” Gandhi said. “In Bengal, the clubs which used to stare at relegation in CAB League would import talent from other states. Then it became standard practice. But after Mohammed Shami’s success, people started looking at a broader picture. There has been a restriction on the imports, but these clubs have a fantastic network. That’s why you see a Shahbaz Ahmed from Mewat and an Akash Deep from Bihar’s Dehri flourishing in Bengal. Sourav Ganguly’s Vision 2020 programme when he was president of Cricket Association of Bengal was a “great initiative,” added Gandhi. medium115646149 The ‘impact’ a cricketer has on a game is now key to judging his potential. Shrivastava said the IPL scouts are trained to go in with an open mind and just focus on how a player reacts to a situation. Former India wicketkeeper Vijay Dahiya, who has worked with Kolkata Knight Riders in their IPL triumphs in 2012 and 2014 before joining Delhi Capitals and Lucknow Super Giants, offered an honest explanation. “This generation has grown up playing T20 cricket, which revolves around impact. Thanks to T20, the results in longer formats are largely determined by impact in shorter moments of these games. You can’t judge a player based only on their numbers,” Dahiya said. Tracing down these ‘impact’ players is less difficult now, thanks to the franchise model. The Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA), led by former BCCI president N Srinivasan, became the pioneer in introducing franchise-based T20 leagues with the TNPL in 2016. Now, every state tries to have its own T20 league. Corporates, seduced by the riches in Indian cricket, have jumped on the bandwagon. Leading sports networks broadcast these matches. Shrivastava says TNPL and the Karnataka Premier League were “must-visits” for IPL scouts during his time. Dahiya, now a coach with Purani Delhi-6 in the Delhi Premier League T20’s inaugural season, has a simple theory. “Every match is on TV. Those impact players are tough to miss. In the last few years, when I worked in the IPL, we tried to research all the unorganized cricket. But now with these T20 leagues, local state tournaments will be competitive. Franchises offer great incentives to scouts, which encourages them to go deep into state cricket and find talent,” Dahiya said. Sweet dreams, big results Hope can be a great motivator, and now there are more families willing to make sacrifices to ensure their ward gets a piece of the cricketing pie. Pant’s childhood coach Devender Sharma, who runs Delhi’s historic club Sonnet Club after the death of legendary coach Tarak Sinha, knows this better than most. “We see kids come from UP, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and even Bihar. After the IPL, I see more people willing to leave their families behind and come and stay in Delhi to get more opportunities,” he said. “We too have a responsibility to not give them false hopes. We see them in trials and tell them if they are good enough to be worked on. For batters, we look at 14 to 16-year-olds. Fast bowlers can be 18. Mayank Yadav, who has done so well in IPL recently, comes from a very humble background. We try to support these players by giving them gear and not charging them. We got associated with a government school in Dwarka where we have to train underprivileged players for free. The LB Shastri club does the same. IPL player Kulwant Khejroliya is a product of the same system,” Sharma said. “Cricket is a proper industry now,” Dahiya said. “It’s a huge motivator. You get to be seen on live TV even if you are playing in a local T20 league. The pay is good.” Mhambrey has noticed that players from small towns are very confident. “They are never in awe of anything,” he said. “I have seen Khaleel, who came from Tonk. Ishan [Kishan] came from Jharkhand. They rubbed shoulders with international players at an early age. These players are not in awe of the big stage or of any personality. Yes, they need refinement, but they know they are few good performances away from being in the limelight.” Gandhi said, “Boys from the suburbs and small towns are desperate to succeed, and I mean that in a positive way. It’s all-or-nothing for them. Abhishek Porel is a prime example. He is doing well for Delhi Capitals in IPL and has also made it to the Duleep Trophy.” medium115646377 The ripple effects can be seen in the unlikeliest of towns. Avtar Singh, Pant’s first coach in Roorkee, said, “When Rishabh played here, there were players who came to train but they were more like 'hobby' cricketers. The ones that were a bit talented, I asked them to move out of Roorkee because the cricket here was not recognised by the system then. I asked Rishabh to move to Delhi and try to get into the Sonnet Club under Tarak Sinha.” Things changed when Uttarakhand got its BCCI affiliation. “Now, my wards stay with me. They don’t need to leave their homes. BCCI’s affiliation has changed the dynamics here. All tournaments are recognized. There are more tournaments played that are recognized by the association,” Avtar said. Avtar proudly pointed out that Mumbai Indians’ medium pacer Madhwal is from his academy. “Madhwal completed his engineering a few years ago and was still playing tennis-ball cricket. He started taking cricket seriously and trained here. Soon after, he was spotted by the Uttarakhand management. In two years, he was playing for Mumbai Indians,” Avtar said. Similarly, Natarajan put Chinnappampatti on the cricket map with his meteoric rise. During his early days in the sport, Natarajan’s family struggled to put food on the table. His father worked in the weaving industry and his mother ran a roadside meat shop. He did not have access to facilities and depended on the mentorship of his friend Jayaprakash, who he refers to as his “brother”. Investing in talent Competitive cricket has penetrated the country, thanks to the BCCI’s extensive programmes. “BCCI’s move to certify more coaches has helped. They go on to run academies and that brings uniformity to the training of these boys. These coaches can go to different parts of India,” Mhambrey said. Prasad highlighted the substantial funds that the states receive from the board. Before becoming a national selector, he served as Andhra Pradesh’s director of cricket. “When I was the director of Andhra cricket, 40% of the funds would go into salaries and basic expenses, 40% was allocated towards development of cricket in various districts. That allowed us to formalise cricket in corners of the state,” Prasad said. “Sheikh Rasheed, who was part of India's U-19 World Cup-winning team in 2022, was adopted by an Andhra academy in Mangalagiri and groomed there. Even Nitish Reddy, who is now touted as a successor to Hardik Pandya, was first coached in Vizag,” he said. Dahiya offers an intriguing insight: “IPL franchises now look at players as investment. There are a lot of franchises who are willing to pick up players and train them at their academies for years before throwing them into the deep end. They don’t expect results straight away and this helps the player’s development.” medium115646680 Prasad also worked for BCCI when nine new teams were inducted in domestic cricket. But he feels BCCI’s policy to allow professional players has helped. “When the new states were incorporated, there was concern over the quality of cricket, especially in the northeast. But a few associations like Puducherry, Uttarakhand and Chandigarh showed great promise. The board allowed more players from established teams to play as professionals in the lesser teams. Teams like Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha and Gujarat have all become strong teams because of this move,” he said. As a young cricketer today, if you have the talent, perseverance and willingness to make sacrifices, your skills will be noticed.