When Yashbardhan Singh Chauhan picked up a cricket bat for the first time at the age of six, his father Anami knew from the grip alone. The hands were in the right place. That was enough. He enrolled his son at Lavkesh Chaudhary’s cricket academy in Gwalior the same week.
On Thursday, his son was named captain of for the tour of Sri Lanka next month — three one-day matches and two multi-day games.
“My father was also a club-level cricketer. The way I held the bat for the first time — jaise meine bat pakda — it was the right way. So he decided to enroll me in one of the academies in Gwalior,” Yashbardhan said.
The word spread fast once he started scoring. In the A W Kanmadikar Trophy, the MPCA’s under-13 inter-divisional tournament, he scored 425, 235 and 391 in successive innings — around 1,300 runs in five matches. He was thirteen.
Since then he has led the MP side at under-14, under-16 and under-19 level without interruption.
When shut the world down, Anami drove 40 kilometres every day — Gwalior to Murena and back — so his son could attend practice. The sessions continued. The runs continued.
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India Men’s U19 squads for Sri Lanka series announced.
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— BCCI (@BCCI)
Coach Charanjit Bhangu, who has trained him since 2007, remembers the cricketing intelligence as much as the run-scoring. “He had a very good cricketing IQ. Once during a Punjab U-16 tour to Madhya Pradesh, the coach sent him in as an opener — he had never batted so high. He scored 145,” Bhangu said.
Last season Yashbardhan scored 550 runs with a highest score of 223.
A year ago, he met Rajat Patidar. The senior MP and India player asked him about his scores, liked what he heard, and handed over his own helmet and gloves.
“For me my first goal was to get selected for India under-19. Everyone at home is happy and excited but I know I have a long way to go. It was last year I met Rajat bhai. He asked me about my scores and was happy so he gave me his helmet and gloves. I like to play long innings — usmein ek alag maza hai,” he said.
He is seventeen. His father runs a business making wheat flour machines. His mother is a housewife. He doesn’t have a sporting idol but he follows Cristiano Ronaldo for what the Portuguese forward had to overcome to get where he did. In Indian cricket, he watches Virat Kohli — specifically, the fitness.
“I haven’t had to sacrifice as much, but if he can sacrifice so much to show the world, then god has given me everything. I have such a good father. If I keep working hard, I can do it too,” he said.
The tour begins July 4 in Hambantota.
