“A good player gets into people’s heads. They regard him as a god. A good performance in a crucial match changes a player’s life.” – Arshin Kulkarni
Telford Vice / Bloemfontein
IF you’re trying to find Arshin Kulkarni, start looking at the top; of a batting order, a medium pacer’s run-up, or a roomful of people. Kulkarni sticks out, as much for his looming height, sturdy frame and striking hazel eyes as he does for his success in an unusual playing role.
Few cricketers combine batting in the top order with regular seam bowling. Even fewer do so as conspicuously as Kulkarni. Like he did for Eagle Nishak Titans against Puneri Bappa in a Maharashtra Premium League (MPL) match in Pune in June last year.
Kulkarni opened the batting and scored 117 off 54, hitting three fours and 13 sixes. That’s more than three-quarters of his runs in boundaries. Then he took 4/21 — Yash Kshirsagar was among his victims — to help his team win by a solitary run. No-one else in the match made more than 50 or took more than three wickets. Ruturaj Gaikwad’s 217.39 was the only strike rate higher than Kulkarni’s 216.67, and nobody bettered his economy rate of 5.25.
That kind of thing gets you noticed. Exponentially more so if — as was the case in this instance — the match is broadcast on television and streamed. The right people were watching.
So, in December last year, after Kulkarni had hit a tournament high 19 sixes in the MPL, in which he finished third among the runscorers, and been the 10th highest runscorer and India’s highest at the under-19 Asia Cup in the UAE, Lucknow Super Giants bought him at the IPL auction for his base price of 20 lakh rupees, or USD24,000.
That’s a lot of headline grabbing by any measure, but an outrageous amount for someone who won’t turn 19 until February 15. By then Kulkarni should have returned home from the under-19 World Cup in South Africa, which is scheduled to end four days previously. His next adventure will start about a month later: the IPL itself. Was he daunted? Prepared? Able to fit something so vast into his still developing consciousness?
Certainly, he seems ready for anything. So he didn’t blink when, clearly without having been informed earlier, he was summoned out of the huddle by India’s team manager at an ICC Cricket for Good clinic with local children at Bloemfontein’s Mangaung Oval on Tuesday to talk to Cricbuzz. Immediately, a tall, sturdy young man bounded over, beamed a smile, and extended his hand.
It was an instant to be remembered years from now, should Kulkarni live up to the potential he has shown and the hype that has generated. India’s stars conduct their careers in splendid isolation from their adoring public and, except for press conferences and increasingly rare interviews, the media. So to have the anointed scion of the next generation of the country’s biggest cricket names lope happily towards a reporter felt like fantasy.
How did he feel about, sooner rather than later, perhaps becoming one of the most unreachable players in the world game? “I would like to,” Kulkarni said without hesitation. Even though that would mean freedoms like walking unbothered down any street in India would be taken from him? “There are advantages and disadvantages. The level players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma and other legends are on has made it hard for them to go out, but it’s their job that has done that.”
Could he explain to non-Indians why the game is what it has become in his country? “In India cricket is worship. A good player gets into people’s heads. They regard him as a god. A good performance in a crucial match changes a player’s life.” Like it seems to have done for Kulkarni in the wake of his 117.
But he didn’t arrive fully formed that shining day in Pune in June. Not long ago, for instance, he bowled leg spin. A growth spurt changed that. “In my under-16 and under-14 days I tried fast bowling for fun; it was just a part of my enjoyment of cricket,” Kulkarni said. “But then my height increased and I worked on my fitness. Also, there were times when my team needed a fast-bowling allrounder. It’s a pretty tiring job but it comes with pretty good results.”
Long before that happened he had left his hometown of Solapur to live with his grandparents in Pune, where he was part of the Cadence Academy. “I was moving up and down between Pune and Solapur three days a week,” Kulkarni said. “I would skip school two days a week, and on Sundays I would come back to Solapur.” That involved other members of his family: “They used to travel with me, because I was around 11 or 12. They’ve always been there for me.”
Somewhere in the conversation Kulkarni said what had long since been unmistakable: “Cricket has been the centre of my life.” So to have landed an IPL deal so early in his career “was an exciting and proud moment for me and my family”. He hoped his time with LSG would give him opportunities “to learn and experience new things with KL Rahul sir and with the experience of Justin Langer sir”.
Behind those obvious sentiments was more than enough good manners and enthusiasm to make it difficult to believe Kulkarni won’t give himself the best chance to achieve his aim. “I just want to take everything I can get from the experienced players, to learn many new things I can apply to make my game better.”
Given his path to the IPL, the pinnacle of the modern game, and the growing number of avenues to reach it that don’t include international cricket, did Kulkarni think the under-19 World Cup remained relevant? “Every player who starts a cricket career wants to represent their country,” he said. “So a stage like this makes the dream come true for us. You get a chance to talk to the media, to experience venues like South Africa and many other countries and you learn about the conditions. It’s a critical tournament. You could win, but it’s also about the fear of losing while you’re playing for India. That’s a big thing.”
Considering that pressure, what did he think about India’s rule of limiting players to one edition of the tournament? “It’s a good decision because that means more players are given the privilege of representing the country, and they also gain experience. It’s not like one player gets two tournaments and another who is young and talented doesn’t get the opportunity to play at this level.”
Famously already, his answer to his grandmother’s question about what he wanted for his “eighth or ninth” birthday was: “Jacques Kallis.” He was given a life-sized poster of the seam-bowling batting allrounder instead. “It’s still with me in my bedroom. On the wall, it’s Jacques Kallis and on either side there are photos of me batting with him.”
The cricket world Kallis entered in July 1993, when he played for South Africa’s under-17 side against Scotland’s under-19 team at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire, is unrecognisable from Kulkarni’s milieu. But not everything changes completely: Kallis scored 54 and took 1/5 in four overs that day.
With a look at the past through his Kallis kaleidoscope, Kulkarni has played his way into a present pregnant with promise. Our interview over, he beamed another smile and offered his hand again. Then he bounded back to his teammates and into his future.
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