The fall and rise of Jaydev Unadkat - will he make the cut second time round?

Jaydev Unadkat picked up 13 wickets in 13 matches in this seasons IPL for Royal Challengers Bangalore. (IANS Photos)

The last thing you would expect from Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace is a fast bowler. More so if he looks like a gangly preteen, who at best can get a medium weight tennis ball to bounce up to the chin of the batsman.

Keeping this in perspective, Jaydev Unadkat’s year in review of 2010 would have read like a superhero comic. The start of the year saw him getting selected for the U-19 World Cup in New Zealand and by the end of it he was playing Test cricket for India in South Africa. Between these two events, he impressed Wasim Akram with his ability to land the ball on its seam, came close to bagging an IPL contract with the Kolkata Knight Riders and was selected to the India ‘A’ squad without having played a first class match. He picked up 13 for 103 on debut and a month later he was headed for Sri Lanka as a net bowler for the national team.

His international debut in Centurion, though, was more sobering as he sent down 26 wicket-less overs as India crashed to an innings defeat. A month later though, he landed a $250,000 contract with KKR. Akram had marked him out as “one for the future” and very few could go against his cricketing acumen.

Since then and till early this year, it has all been downhill for Unadkat. He got seven games in 2011 edition where he picked up six wickets but went at 8.33 runs an over. 2012 was worse as he failed to find a spot in the settled Kolkata bowling line-up and played only one game where he gave away 32 runs in three overs without a wicket. By the end of the year he had lost his India contract and was on the way out from his IPL franchise as well.

Since then it seems as if he has gone back to the drawing board and worked on the basics. The year started with him playing an able supporting role to the pace-spin combo of Siddharth Trivedi and Vishal Joshi in the Ranji trophy. He was no longer seen as the spearhead of the bowling attack but that seemed to help him regain his accuracy and focus.

This year’s IPL though has been the turning point. Having been offloaded from the Knight Riders, Unadkat was signed up by the Royal Challengers Bangalore as a replacement for the injured Zaheer Khan. Co-incidentally he had replaced Zaheer Khan on debut as well back in 2010. More often than not, RCB used their quota of foreigners to bolster their top order with the likes of Chris Gayle, Tillakaratne Dilshan, AB de Villers and Moises Henriques. As a result, they required one of their Indian bowlers to rise up to the occasion and defend the totals set by their fearsome batting quartet.

Unadkat played 13 matches as Bangalore juggled him around the likes of Ravi Rampaul, Murali Kartik and R.P. Singh, alongside the now dependable Vinay Kumar. He picked up 13 wickets and ended up with the best economy rate for any Royal Challengers bowler, who has played more than 10 matches. This included a fiver against Delhi, in a match which his team won by a sum total of four runs.

What has worked for Unadkat in this year’s IPL has been his increase in pace. Which is quite ironic by itself as his present bowling coach at Bangalore is a man known for his innocuous yet effective leg-cutters – Venkatesh Prasad. Nevertheless, the good thing is that his bowling action has not undergone any significant change, which means his control has improved. So has his maturity – he no longer sprays it around all over the place like an 18-year-old gawky greenhorn expecting the batsman to make the mistake. The head has clearly grown heavier on the shoulders.

The Indian fast bowling cupboard is not overflowing with riches at present. Hence Ray Jennings, the Royal Challengers coach who has worked with the Proteas in the past, feels that Unadkat has everything to make a comeback to the Indian team as early as the South African tour. Till that actually happens, he has to continue doing what he has done so well recently – keeping the ball and his mind in the right place.