A tall, young fast bowler with lots of promise. That’s certainly a proper assessment of 22-year-old pacer Harshit Rana, who playedan important role in the Kolkata Knight Riders clinching their third IPL crown earlier this year.
Including him for the ODI series in Sri Lanka earlier in July/August was a fair call, though he didn’t feature in any of those three one-dayers. The Indian team management has gone a step further to pick Harshit for a gruelling tour of Australia, even though when his red-ball experience is so far limited to just 10 first-class appearances.
On the other hand, a Mukesh Kumar gets picked as a reserve for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy despite his consistency at the domestic level and also for India A. Moreover, Mukesh has the experience of three Test matches, alongside six ODIs and 17 T20Is.
For Team India or precisely, for head coach Gautam Gambhir, though, Harshit’s “ability to bring more to the table”, particularly his efficient use of the long handle, mattered more than anything else.
In fact, in his last competitive game towards the end of October, Harshit scored 59 batting at No.8 while his bowling figures read 5/80 and 2/61 in Delhi’s 10-wicket win over Assam at the Kotla.
Before that game, Harshit had a couple of four-wicket hauls in two Duleep Trophy games for India D. He didn’t do badly with the bat either, aggregating 67 runs and averaging 22.33.
Harshit can bowl the heavy ball, which extracts awkward bounce after pitching. That said, there have beenmurmurs in the Indian cricketing fraternity about hislack of enough first-class exposure, especially before a series in Australia.
Playing to strengths
According to Tinu Yohannan, bowling coach of India D during this year’s Duleep Trophy, lack of enough domestic games doesn’t make much of a difference for quicks. Rather, Harshit could well surprise the Australians like Ishant Sharma did on the 2007-08 tour.
“Yes, for batters and spinners, domestic experience helps. But for fast bowlers, it’s just about the ability to be on the field, which is more important and to hit the right areas consistently.
“So, I think Harshit has that in him and his mindset is quite good, and he’s sure about what he’s doing... He can definitely be the surprise package for this Australia tour, like how Ishant Sharma was in that 2007-08 series. So, that way, it’s good he hasn’t played much of domestic cricket.
“The only thing is, he should be able to bowl those number of overs in the game. It’s the management’s job to make his body ready for that,” Yohannan, also the first Kerala cricketer to play for India, told The Telegraph.
“The strength Harshit has will help him in Australian conditions since he hits that kind of a back-of-a-length spot with the occasional fuller-length delivery, which is quite deceptive. It’s the fuller length that draws the batsman forward while he gets extra bounce, which makes it difficult for the batter to deal with. To left-handers, he can bowl both over and round the wicket, which is a big advantage,” Yohannan, who played three Tests and as many ODIs and currently coaches Andhra, explained.
Nonetheless, if selected in the XI for any of the five Tests, Harshit does have a task ahead of living up to the team management’s faith in him.
