How Harshal Patel sacrificed American dream to play for India and is now set for T20 WC debut

Slower balls in cricket have become very popular now. Especially in the shortest format where the bowlers are leaving no stone unturned to be ahead of the batters. The art of bowling slow, by seamers, requires a lot of tactical application, skill and precision.

India’s Harshal Patel is from a generation of fast bowlers that have adopted the art of bowling slow as their primary business and not as an additional delivery occasionally called upon. In fact, Harshal Patel has been the designated slower ball specialist for India going into the 2022 T20 World Cup.

Harshal Patel was fast-tracked to the Indian squad in November of 2021 after a breakthrough IPL season with record-equaling 32 wickets – the joint-highest in a single IPL season. And after playing 23 T20Is in less than a year, he finds himself in Australia, playing his first T20 World Cup for India.

Read: India’s need for speed and Pakistan’s over speeding to determine Group 2 pole position

Before the 2021 IPL season, Harshal had a brief stint with Delhi Capitals after a long bench-warming haul with the Royal Challengers Bangalore. In fact, the pacer made his IPL debut for RCB back in 2012 but was largely seen as a backup bowler. RCB had called in Harshal Patel for trials after his eight-wicket haul in the Ranji Trophy quarter-finals for Haryana. The pacer managed to bag another eight-wicket haul in the semi-finals, after the call from RCB.

Even after his selection with RCB, where he was warming the bench in IPL, he continued to shine with his performances in domestic cricket.

The most interesting part about Harshal Patel is not his IPL debut, or his IPL comeback, or his international debut. Rather how he followed his passion for cricket against what any other person would do.

Harshal Patel’s mother pushed him into a cricket academy at the age of 13 since he would play around all the time in the streets. “My first day going into the academy and realising that I’m better than most of the children there even though I have no formal training in cricket sort of made me feel like I’m really good at it,” Harshal described his start in the RCB Podcast.

Harshal Patel made a comeback to the Indian side in the T20 series against Australia after being out for several months owing to an injury. Sportzpics

Fast forward four years and Harshal’s parents were shifting to the USA when he was 17. But the pacer himself decided to stay back in India to pursue his Indian dream of being a cricketer.

“I think it was, to be honest, an easy decision because at 17 you don’t have a lot of factors playing in your mind. At that time, I was like I want to play cricket and my parents said okay you’re going to be here. You have family around you. If you need anything just call them. I had my cousins, my uncles and aunts and all that,” Harshal recalls.

However, the disassociation was definitely difficult for a 17-year-old boy. The pacer narrates his routine for a significant three years after his parents left for the US.

“I was very close to my family, like very close to my parents, especially my mom. So when they went to the US in 2008, I was a 17-year-old kid and living alone at home, obviously cleaning my own house and sorting my food.

“I used to go and eat at those paratha places every day twice a day. I would come for practice, eat on the way, come back home, clean the house, go to sleep, go to practice again in the evening, finish eating, come back home, and sleep. So that was my routine for almost three and a half years.”

Harshal, more than a decade after that decision, is still not able to completely fathom the reality of what he decided at that age.

“I don’t remember it being a very complicated decision, but now when I think of it 13 years after that decision it feels like, ‘how did I make that decision so easily and how did my parents actually allow me to take the decision so easily’. So yes, a lot of credit to them to sort of put so much faith in me.”

Harshal’s parents stayed in the USA for seven-eight years. They also got the US citizenship that many Indians crave. Since his parents had US citizenship, Harshal could also have applied for it and proceeded into it quite easily. But he chose to continue with the Indian passport.

“So once you get a [USA] green card, you have to stay in the US for five years to be able to apply for citizenship. I never had that option, I couldn’t stay in the US for five years at a time, and so that was never on cards for me.

“Also, if I get an American passport then I play in the IPL as an overseas [player]. I was not finding a place in the team as an Indian (laughs), so playing as an overseas [player] was sort of far-fetched.

“Also that has never been something that I aspired to, the American passport or whatever perks that came with it. Every decision I’ve made since I was 17 years old, in my memory, have been around ‘I want to play cricket’. So anything that helped me play cricket, or become a better cricketer, I obviously chose that over anything else.”

After sacrificing what is termed the American dream, Harshal has finally achieved the dream every Indian must have had at least once in their childhood. And yet when he takes the field for India, Down Under, things are not going to be easy for the pacer.

Coming after an injury lay-off, Harshal would hope to get the dip back on his slower ones and do the job for his side towards the business end of the innings.

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