A son of a farmer who just got
by, Sran was back from Bhiwani for his summer vacation at his home in Dabwali.
It is a town with a shop that is half in Haryana and half in Punjab. Sran was
17, studying boxing at the famous Bhiwani Boxing Club, whose founder Jagdish
Singh gave India the Olympic medallist Vijender Singh. A newspaper
advertisement changed it all from boxing.While boxing took Sran to Haryana, a
Kings XI Punjab advertisement calling youngsters for trials brought him
decisively to Punjab. Cricket had been at his heart: he used to play in his
village with a tennis ball, but had never played in matches longer than eight
overs. He saw the ad, and went to Mohali with his cousin and another friend
just out of curiosity.
A Kings XI selection did not happen,
but Sran found himself in the Kings Cup as one of the best 35-40 uncapped
cricketers in Punjab. At the trials, he bowled wearing normal trainers. Here,
too, just before the first game, he sat and looked around at others putting on
spikes. Just the fact he had got to the best 50 or so made Sran take up cricket
more seriously. He first began to practise at an academy in Sirsa where someone
introduced him to KK Cricket Academy in Sector 40 in Chandigarh.
In Chandigarh, Sran came to know
of this contest called Gatorade Speedster. He took part, and won the North
India leg. That was when Punjab officials saw him and asked him to start
practising at the Mohali stadium. That was when Sran began bowling in the nets
for visiting teams and also during the IPL. He won the India Under-19 leg of
the Speedster. That took him to Dubai where he trained at the ICC academy.
Sran had done all that when he
first played inter-district cricket, for Mohali. Next year, he was selected for
Punjab, clearly not a product of the system but someone imposed on the system
through talent contests and sheer natural talent. Vikram Rathour, a national
selector now, was Punjab's coach then. Sran bowled eight T20 overs for three
wickets and 40 runs in 2011-12, and also took 14 wickets at 32 in the Ranji
Trophy proper that season. Then he disappeared.
A spate of injuries - the last of
which was an ankle fracture while playing pre-season warm-ups for Punjab before
the 2014-15 season - kept Sran out of all cricketing action. His way back into
reckoning, once again, was unconventional. He went to the open trials called by
Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals, in Vadodara and Mumbai respectively.
Rajasthan's Monty Desai and Rahul Dravid were surprised Sran had played only
one season of proper cricket. This was their kind of cricketer: raw, full of
promise and a surprise package. They got him into the auction where Mumbai
might have bid for him, but did not.
"Only Rajasthan can punt on
my kind of players," Sran told ESPNcricinfo during IPL 2015. As is the
case with Rajasthan, though, they work on players in the nets for a season
before sending him out. Dravid believed Sran would be the finished article in
IPL 2016. Dravid and Sran's IPL fate is not known yet, but for sure Rajasthan
won't be there.
Thankfully, in between came the
traditional cricket season. In his first match back as a first-class cricketer,
Sran took six wickets in 17 overs after his side had posted 604 for 5
declared. Yuvraj Singh was impressed. "Barinder saran! Serious spell of
fast bowling on a flat track ! A talented fast left armer to watch out for
reminds me of a young @ImZaheer," he tweeted that day, with the correct
spelling of Sran's name and not the clerical mistake that needs to be fixed in
BCCI records.
When India went to play the first
Test against South Africa in Mohali , Rathour sent out a special call to Sran
to come to the nets. A pass was made at the last minute, and locals recalled how
the scenario was similar to the call made to a young Harbhajan Singh during the
drawn Test against Sri Lanka in 1997. Anil Kumble was among those impressed
then. Four months later, Harbhajan was handed his first Test. Less than three
months after those Mohali net sessions, Sran could be making his ODI debut, in
Australia.
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