Can Akash Madhwal, the first bowler to snare a five-for in IPL play-offs, revive CSK?

“He was wayward and looked underprepared. Next year, during the Covid, when the Ranji Trophy got cancelled and I took up the job of head coach, I told him that he will play all three formats, no matter if he went for runs. I assured him that he would get to play all the matches,” he would add.

He impressed but not with a truckload of wickets. The biggest virtue of Madhwal—apart from his knack of nailing perfect yorkers and hammering innocuous short balls—is his composure in duress. He could be fleeced for boundaries, edges would evade the fielders, batsmen would play and miss, yet he seldom gets disheartened, his bowling barely loses the sting and steam. The effort in the 2023 eliminator still remains the best figures (3.5-0-5-5) by any bowler in a play-off.

The turning point came in 2023, when Mumbai Indians roped him in to replace the injured Suryakuamar Yadav. Not a like-for-like replacement, but he soon became captain Rohit Sharma’s trusted lieutenant. He hails from Dhandera in Roorkee and was a neighbour of Rishabh Pant. After his Army-man father’s death in a tragedy in 2013, he put emphasis on academics and completed his graduation in engineering. “Madhwal was focussed on his education, was doing engineering and played cricket only as a hobby. Since Uttarakhand was not playing in the Ranji Trophy, his main focus was on tennis ball cricket. He was a terror in the tennis ball cricket tournaments,” his coach Avatar Singh would tell this daily.