On the eve of India’s Test against Afghanistan, as Shubman Gill and his teammates wrapped up their last practice session at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh PCA Stadium in Mullanpur, Ramesh Kumar gathered his kit bag. He had spent the week bowling to Sai Sudharsan, Dhruv Jurel and Yashasvi Jaiswal in the nets. Now he was preparing to board a bus back to Jalalabad, near the India-Pakistan border, where his father Mangu Ram works as a cobbler and his mother Narmo Devi sells bangles and make-up products in the surrounding villages.
“Meri layi sabto vadi gal hai ki main Indian team nu nets ch ball pat,” he says. It’s the biggest thing of my life that I bowled to the Indian team in the nets. He is 27 years old and he means it without embarrassment.
Kumar grew up in Jalalabad playing tennis ball cricket, which in Punjab means tournaments almost every day, a day rate, a bus journey. “Lage Phage siga, (It was hit and try)”he says .Some months he played 20-22 days. Some months nothing. On the good days he earned five to six thousand rupees. What he had, in the absence of formal coaching or leather ball training, was the action. He had studied Sunil Narine on television until he understood the grip, the bent middle finger, the carrom ball rotation. He was tall, which gave him pace on the ball. In the tennis ball circuit of Punjab, where mystery spinners who can also hit sixes are valued above most things, Kumar became a name. The moniker arrived naturally: Narine Jalalabadiya.
In 2021 he played for Moga district, was called to the Punjab senior camp, and his training videos reached KKR assistant coach Abhishek Nair through Indian cricketer Gurkeerat Mann. At the 2022 IPL Mega Auction, KKR picked him up for Rs 20 lakh. A cobbler’s son from Jalalabad had a franchise. He had no idea what came next.
The first thing he did when he walked into the KKR camp was touch Narine’s feet. He could not speak English and Narine could not speak Punjabi, but the gesture needed no translation. Kumar had spent years bowling with a bent middle finger trying to be this man from Trinidad. Now here was Narine himself, in the same room. Narine, he was told later through Abhishek Nair, was happy about it.