For five years, Yash Thakur has been groomed as Umesh Yadav’s understudy. On Sunday, playing his maiden Ranji Trophy final, Yash, the protege, overshadowed the master to help Vidarbha bowl Mumbai out for 224.
Yash, bowling first-change, broke the 81-run opening stand with a fuller one that jagged away to kiss opener Bhupen Lalwani’s edge and rested in Akshay Wadkar’s gloves. He came back after lunch to break the back of Mumbai’s lower-order, dismissing Shams Mulani and Tanush Kotian.
With Umesh being around the team for almost the whole season, the likes of Yash, Aditya Thakare and Darshan Nalkande have excelled in his tutelage. But Yash cannot forget the first time he met him, at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Academy in Nagpur during his under-16 days.
“After being selected for a camp, my first day at the VCA Academy, I met Umesh bhaiya in person,” Yash had told The Hindu earlier in the season. “I was in awe of him and wanted to follow into his footsteps by going on to play for India. But the first big dream was to bowl like him and bowl in tandem with him just once.”
While Yash refers to him as a “bedrock” of the Vidarbha unit, more than heaping praise on Umesh, Yash remembers an incident during the first time he bowled along with Umesh, during Vidarbha’s Ranji semifinal against Kerala in 2018-19 on a “terrible” pitch at Wayanad.
“We ran through them on the first side, he was unplayable but I went wicketless,” Yash recalled. “He walked up to me, reminded me the game is not over and told me to back myself. It helped and I picked four in the next match. Since then, every time I bowl when he is around, he is always at mid-off, egging me and the others on.”
Had it not been for former Vidarbha captain and coach Praveen Hinganikar, however, Yash would have continued to emulate his idol and kept on keeping wickets.
After getting enrolled into Hinganikar’s academy following Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s exploits in the 2011 World Cup, Yash casually bowled in the nets once. Hinganikar saw him and told him to never wear the wicketkeeping gloves again. A disgruntled Yash told his coach he wants to “be like Dhoni”.
“Sir (Hinganikar) told me there are more ways beyond wicketkeeping to emulate Dhoni. He told me to learn from Dhoni in other aspects of the game and implement it while bowling. That was a turning point,” Yash said.
At the end of the first day’s play of the final, Yash will be telling himself and his teammates, especially batters, the same thing that Umesh told him in that 2018-19 season. “Remember, it’s a two-innings match! You can come back stronger.”
