The fast bowler talks about how he dealt with discouragement, the loss of a parent, and how his game has grown since he joined Chennai Super Kings
September 23, 2011 is a day Tushar Deshpande will never forget. He was 16 years old, playing for Mumbai Under-19s for the first time. He had not bowled well in his first match and was dropped for the second. The coach told him to join him for a walk around the ground in Gwalior.
“He started by asking what you do for education. Then he asked: what’s your future in cricket? So I spontaneously told him, I’ll play for India. The coach looked at me and said: ‘Do you think you can play for India?’ I said, yes, why not? So he started comparing me with other guys, saying, see how tall Umesh Yadav is, Dhawal Kulkarni, Zaheer Khan – all around six feet. You are just about 5′ 10″.”
The coach had more to say. “He then said, ‘So do you feel you can go at that [high] speed and play for India? I again said yes. He said: ‘If you ask me, I don’t think you can go above 125kph with this height. You have good batting technique, you can start batting, or this is a very good age to try out other things.’
“I got so pissed [off], very depressed, [had] zero confidence, and I started comparing myself with others. And when you compare yourself with others, you also think poorly about yourself – that I don’t have the height, I don’t have the strength, I don’t have the pace.”
Deshpande was sent home the next day and he told his mother, Vandana, what the coach had said. “She told me, this is your choice that you started playing cricket. Never come home crying with what is happening in cricket. This is your own battle. You have to fight it out there. If you can fight it out, continue playing cricket, otherwise you can leave your bag outside and stop playing cricket.”
In July this year, Deshpande, at 29, made his international debut, in India’s fourth T20I in Zimbabwe. “The moment I was informed I was going to make the debut, I first called my dad and asked him: ‘How do you feel that your son is now going to debut for India?’ He got emotional, started to talk about my [late] mother. I tried hard to mask my emotions during the call. And then I got back to my process: that no matter it’s the India debut, I have to give my best and be there for my team, which has been my attitude since I started playing cricket – that I’m on the ground to make a difference for it.”
Deshpande’s father, Uday, is his first idol. He was a left-arm fast bowler who played B Division cricket on Mumbai’s professional circuit.
“He won’t show his emotion on the face because he has taught me that we should be like soldiers,” Deshpande says of his father. “Whatever we feel should be beneath [the surface] and the outside world shouldn’t know about it. That is [one of] the biggest things he has taught me.”
Deshpande is a stocky fast bowler – built like his friend and Mumbai team-mate Shardul Thakur – and his strength lies in his ability to shape the ball away and hit the deck hard, consistently clocking speeds around 140kph. In the last two years he has been the best seamer at Chennai Super Kings, and is in the India D team playing the first-class Duleep Trophy, ahead of India A and India’s tours of Australia starting November.
Seven years ago, during his debut first-class season, Deshpande injured his ankle and was ruled out of the Ranji Trophy after playing only eight games. Two months later his mother was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer.