Shivam Mavi: young, focused and very fast

The Indian team is a boisterous bunch. Prithvi Shaw is the face of it, the Instagrammer. Shubman Gill and Abhishek Sharma, the rockstars. Riyan Parag is the dancer. Kamlesh Nagarkoti, the joker. Himanshu Rana, the leader of the bearded gang. It's hard to find a description that fits Shivam Mavi, though. Probably, focused and unassuming. He laughs when you tell him this, he's modest, but doesn't contest it.

That isn't to say Mavi doesn't like his share of fun. It's probably just fair to assume he's the quieter one. On the field, though, he is a bit different. He is a fast bowler, a "mean one" according to his mates. Much like his idol Dale Steyn, he hates being hit even in the nets. He is from a place near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, touted the swing bowlers' nursery of India till not too long ago, at least since Praveen Kumar and Bhuvneshwar Kumar came along. Mavi has proved to be an exception.

"Aggressive toh waise hi hain hum (I'm aggressive anyway). When I used to play in Delhi, a number of batsmen used to keep ducking at my bouncers, few even got hit. Unki aankhon mein dar dekhte the; who bhaag jaate the. Unko dekhke mazaa aata tha (I used to see fear in their eyes, they used to run away from me. I used to be amused watching them). Before the injury, I was a bit faster. My pace has reduced a bit after the injury, but I'm picking up again."

The injury he is referring to is a knee injury he picked up as a 16-year-old, but more on that later. It's the "picking up pace" that has impressed many at the ongoing Under-19 World Cup, where he has six wickets in three matches. The speedgun's record of 146kph, in the match against Australia, surprised many, including Sourav Ganguly, the former India captain, and Ian Bishop, the former West Indies fast bowler, part of the commentary team in New Zealand.

Even as the social media buzz about his speeds took a while to die down, he was immediately spoken to by Rahul Dravid. "He asked me not to get carried away, not to lose my focus in a big tournament." Paras Mhambrey, the bowling coach and a man with a shrewd tactical mind and understanding of fast bowling, is often by his side at the nets, as he is with the bowling group in general.

One of the aspects he has paid special attention to, especially with the older ball, is to bowl yorkers. He trains separately at the nets to achieve this, with just a set of stumps and line markers. "Paras sir always says the more you practice, the better it will come," he says. "We plan by watching videos of batsmen in the opposition and plan accordingly."

This solid understanding of his bowling stems from dealing with that old knee injury. He lost out on a year after doing damage to the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) in his left leg and was advised to focus on accuracy upon return, a suggestion he didn't heed. But he modified his action and bowls open-chested now, allowing him to bring the ball back in. "I used to be an outswing specialist, but then I became an inswing bowler because of the injury," Mavi says. "My body started falling a bit towards one side, so I started working on that and worked on inswing."

Mavi picked up much of his basics in Delhi, the place he used to travel to and stay as a 12-year-old. He was soon part of Delhi Under-14s, but rejection at the Under-16 level "even though I played well and performed" left him disheartened. "When I started my cricket coaching, I just played for the love for it," he says. "Then I realised there may be other things that happen in cricket too. There is politics involved too, but I didn't pay much attention to it."

Branded an "outsider" despite being in the very system for two years, he shifted base to Greater Noida with his family, where he currently lives and trains at the Delhi Wanderers Cricket Academy. His family moved from Sena, on the outskirts of Meerut, to allow Mavi the luxury of training and pursuing cricket without feeling home sick in a big city.

His father had to re-establish his business, but didn't mind doing so for Mavi's cricket. In some ways for Mavi, moving to Greater Noida was like returning to his home state, but proximity to Delhi meant he was sometimes among the same bunch of players who were picked above him in the Under-16 side. But being in the company of Railways' Anureet Singh and Delhi's Parvinder Awana, more than a decade older to him and trainees at the same academy, allowed him to flourish.

At 17, he was bowling at the Afghanistan nets in Greater Noida, Afghanistan's adopted home ground. He was training at the nets when Afghanistan's then coach Lalchand Rajput liked his rhythm and invited him to bowl at his batsmen. He particularly enjoyed bowling to Mohammad Shahzad and Mohammad Nabi. This experience of bowling to an international team even before he broke into India's Under-19 side he regards as valuable but not intimidating.

"Delhi has a lot of good players, and the wickets there are pretty flat," Mavi explains. "I have played there enough to not be too worried about bowling at strong batsmen. I found bowling to certain batsmen from Delhi harder than bowling to the Afghanistan batsmen. Bowling in Delhi prepares you very well, so when I bowled against the Afghans, even though I initially felt that these were international players, later on I really didn't feel too different. I also played a match against them."

Back to the present and the Under-19 World Cup, Mavi has his sights fixed on Bangladesh, a side that beat India at the Under-19 Asia Cup in November. "I was injured and watching from home." On Friday, he will have an opportunity to bowl at the same batsmen in the World Cup quarter-final. "There is no pressure. The days off have helped us train well. I can't wait to play."