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Substitute Bharat seizes the opportunity

Wriddhiman Saha was ruled out of the third day’s play in the opening Test between India and New Zealand
Last Updated 27 November 2021, 20:19 IST

A father who worked at the naval dockyard for a pittance, a mother who was always chasing her incorrigible son around and an elder sister who spent her childhood laughing at a brother who refused to be tamed.

And so they did what any middle-class household in India would have done: send their boy to a cricket academy. This was KS Bharat’s life in the late nineties in Visakhapatnam. Charmingly relatable, and then Saturday happened.

Wriddhiman Saha was ruled out of the third day’s play in the opening Test between India and New Zealand at the Green Park in Kanpur, and Bharat had to pad up. Saha’s stiff neck gave Bharat a chance he would have had to wait a lot longer under normal circumstances.

“If he played for a state like Mumbai or Karnataka, he would have been noticed a long time ago,” says his childhood coach Krishna Rao.

Well, we’ll never know. What we do know is that he got the chance to show his mettle at the highest level when least expected and he made it count. This match and the three dismissals he effected won’t reflect on his resume, but his presence will be spoken of. Also, not many will wonder anymore how or why a relative nobody made it to one of the most sought after positions in Indian cricket.

With an air of confidence, Bharat has shown what everyone on the domestic circuit knew for long. He is by far one of the most talented ’keeper-batters in the country with a batting average of 37.24 and 301 dismissals with the gloves from 78 games. Impressive as his batting might be, he is best known for his skills behind the stumps. Ironic given how recently he started off on the journey as a gloveman.

“He was just such a busy body, he wanted to keep moving and doing something,” says Rao. “But he was one of the best fielders I have ever seen so when he was around 13-14 I asked him to start ’keeping. He wasn’t sure, but it kept him occupied throughout the game.”

“He properly started ’keeping only when he was around 19. Until then he never ’kept seriously,” adds Rao.

Bharath took to ’keeping easily in the way any good fielder would, but it would be long before he got into the science of it. MSK Prasad, Kiran More, Saba Karim, Syed Kirmani… he spent time with every single one of these wicket-keeping giants to add texture to his new-found identity. “He can’t stop learning, that’s his greatest strength. And he has the humility to listen to anybody,” offers Rao.

So, five years after making his first-class debut in 2013, Bharat was now the Andhra ’keeper, and boy, did he make it count. So as the drama ensued post MS Dhoni’s Test retirement, what with selectors still unsure of direction, the likes of Parthiv Patel and Dinesh Karthik were revisited and quickly rejected.

Saha became the Test specialist and Rishabh Pant donned the role of limited-overs wicketkeeper. That ploy went sideways when Saha was injured and Pant had to take up the Test role too.

Saha, at 37, is on his last legs. Pant, at 24, has gotten better behind the stumps, but he’s not a finished product. Bharat, at 28, could be the missing link.

He has spent enough time with the India A squad and was called up to the Test squad once in 2019. He shot to limelight with performances for Royal Challengers Bangalore, and is now more relevant than he ever was.

On Saturday, he was expectedly late to the ball at the start, after all, he didn’t know he was going to play until ten minutes before the start, and he put down a tough catch. But once he got the feel for the ball and stopped snatching, the real Bharat was beautiful to see, as a ’keeper and as a persona. There was an exuberance, a finesse, a practiced calm… he was bred for Test cricket.

“He was just a young boy who was playing cricket on the streets. I told him one day that if he was serious, I will put him in a camp. I did not think then that one day he will play Test cricket for India,” says Srinivas Rao, Bharat’s father. “How do I make sense of this moment? We’re very proud but also in shock. He’s such a good boy. He deserves it.”

The boy who once played tennis-ball cricket at the foothills of the Yarada Hills is renewing his faith by the River Ganges. Poetic.

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(Published 27 November 2021, 17:29 IST)

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