Fearless Kartikeya shows hunger to succeed across formats

Madhya Pradesh left-arm-everything spinner Kumar Kartikeya's story of rising to where he has is so hard to believe, that if it were to be made into a movie, it could well be called a work of fiction. Kartikeya declined that offer, in case you didn't know.

The challenges Kartikeya has thrown at himself since his self-imposed exile ten years ago - including a year in Delhi when he couldn't afford lunch - have shaped him into such a gritty character that the tasks he faces on the field must pale in comparison. The challenges he has conquered have rewarded him with an indomitable spirit and a near-insatiable hunger to succeed.

It's with that spirit that Kartikeya, who bowls both left-arm orthodox spin as well as wristspin, has bagged over 30 wickets for the third Ranji Trophy season in a row. And this one has been his best, with the knockouts still to come: a tally of 34 wickets, an average of 19.02, a strike rate of 46.64, and an innings five-for and a ten-wicket match haul to go with them.

If it was his wristspin that fetched him wickets for Mumbai Indians in the last two IPLs, in first-class cricket, he bowled fingerspin. Until this year. In the second-last league game of this Ranji season, Madhya Pradesh racked up 454, bowled out Baroda for 132, and asked them to follow-on. On the third day, Baroda started to put up a fight with a second-wicket stand of 136. MP were desperate for a win because a draw may not have been enough for a knockouts berth. Kartikeya went off the field for an over and asked coach Chandrakant Pandit in the dressing room if he could try legspin.

"He gave me the go-ahead and told me what kind of field to set," Kartikeya told ESPNcricinfo of his chat with Pandit. "I went back and bowled legspin and picked up two wickets in three overs, one with a googly and one with legspin. Before that, I had never bowled legspin in red-ball games at this level."

Whether he wanted the ball to turn this way or that, Kartikeya aimed to pick up wickets the old-school way - by being prepared: meticulous planning, focus on line and length, send down a thousand deliveries in the nets every day when things weren't going too well.

"My idea is to focus on the line and length according to the type of the batsman, that's all," he said. "If my line and length are good and my plans are simple, the batsman will probably make mistakes. I feel batsmen must be thinking more than me about where to play and how to play. I just have to focus on line and length and set the field. My coach does that the best for me.

"Now I'm among the main players of this team. I feel like I've earned the faith of the coach and the team. My job is to keep performing the way I have been and not think too much about what I did last year or what I'm doing differently this year. My focus is to make the team win with my bowling, whether it's with one wicket or two or five."

This fearlessness to try different things on the big stage didn't start in the Ranji Trophy for Kartikeya. He had started working on his legspin in the early months of 2022 on the advice of his coach Sanjay Bhardwaj in Delhi. He was not in any IPL squad then, and an injury to Arshad Khan in the middle of the IPL season meant Mumbai Indians brought in Kartikeya as a replacement, but based on his legbreaks and variations they had seen in the IPL trials, not the fingerspin he had been bowling in the Ranji Trophy. He was yet to try legspin in a professional match.

A day before Kartikeya's IPL debut, Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma called him and encouraged him to continue bowling the kind of legspin that had brought him to that stage.

"I told him I bowl only left-arm spin in Ranji," Kartikeya said, recalling his tricky conversation with Rohit. "He said, 'But you're bowling [wristspin] here'. Then he only said, 'tu daal, main tere saath hoon [you just bowl, I am with you]'. He supported me completely by saying even if I went for runs, they'd back me. I thought if the captain is backing me why do I need to be scared? His two lines drained out all my nervousness. I bowled with all my confidence after that. I felt so good after that pep talk, I had no tension."

Kartikeya dismissed Sanju Samson with his second ball in the IPL and finished with memorable figures of 4-0-19-1 to help Mumbai Indians end their eight-match losing streak.

"Now whenever I bowl, he says only one thing to me: 'tu ball daal, bowler hai to maar khayega hi khayega, T20 game hi maarne ka hai [you bowl what you want to, every bowler goes for runs in T20s, the format is such]'."

Kartikeya may have carried this fearlessness right from his teenage days when he left his home in Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh, with INR 40 (about half a dollar today) in his pocket, got on a random train and decided to pursue cricket in the city where the train would take him. He ended up in Delhi, chased down academies with the only promise of working hard on his game, and ended up with Bhardwaj.

Even if it was the IPL that brought him fame, Kartikeya's real calling was always the red ball. From his club days to the various leagues he featured in while in Delhi, Kartikeya was always training with the red ball. Except when he started getting picked for MP's 20-over and 50-over squads in the 2018-19 season. His first-class debut also came in the same season but he got a proper run only once the Ranji season that resumed after the Covid-19 interval, in early 2022. In that truncated season of just three league games and three knockouts, MP stormed to their maiden Ranji title on the back of Kartikeya's 32 wickets, second on the overall list, with eight wickets to his name in the semi-final and another five in the final against heavyweights Mumbai. Kartikeya took the new ball in all four innings of the semis and final, struck with the old ball too, and sent back some big names like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran and Manoj Tiwary.

Kartikeya attributed that success to his maiden first-class season, especially his debut match in which he leaked 94 runs in 23 overs in the second innings against Kerala.

"My debut made me learn a lot," he said. "It was a turning and slow track. I was conceding at six an over for a change in red-ball cricket. I had bowled eight-nine overs for 48 runs. At one point I felt like I wasn't made for this level. It had put that doubt in me. Whenever I had bowled before that, I had dominated. And that was the first such match that didn't go my way. There were a lot of doubts in my mind."

Kartikeya found his bearings two games later. He came on to bowl when the ball was still new and removed the top three of Himachal Pradesh to finish with 6 for 28 in the first innings before sending back two of their top three again to end the match with a haul of nine.

"In the third game, I got some confidence when I bowled well," Kartikeya said. "When I got the five-for, it felt like the first match was probably just a one-off. I started growing from there and it's been fine."

Not just in the Ranji Trophy, this season has been the most successful for Kartikeya across formats. In the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy just before Ranji, he bagged wickets in double-digits (14) for the first time, and the T20 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy also saw him finish with his best tally of eight wickets from five games with an economy rate of 5.58. He had trained with the red ball initially for all those years in Delhi, and when he had to switch to the white ball for the shorter formats, it came out better from his hand.

"There wasn't much I had to do," Kartikeya spoke of bowling with the white ball. "The white ball comes out of my hand better; I can grip it better. Its seam and grip are better from the red ball and it suits my hand better for both left-arm spin and legspin."

The common thread in his success and consistency, he said, has been Pandit, who took over the MP reins in 2020 and has taken them to unprecedented heights.

"My recent performances - be it in our victorious Ranji campaign [in 2022] or T20s or Vijay Hazare - had one thing in common, Chandrakant Pandit sir," Kartikeya said. "He had told me to not think much and just bowl as per plan. I've stuck to that and have found success too. Ever since he came to MP, I have picked up wickets and my bowling has reached another level. Before that, I didn't have that many wickets. He has played the main role.

"It's only because of him - his fielding plans, how he explains things to me, he has 20 years of experience - that I've learnt so much and gained from his ideas. He teaches in different ways, sometimes he scolds me, sometimes it's with love, and that's probably because of the expectations he has from us. His anger has in fact helped me at times. The most important thing for me is his guidance."

Pandit wrote his own path as a successful coach with his achievements after his playing career had ended. The spotlight is now on where Kartikeya's steps take him.