When Jagdish Suthar enrolled son Manav at a coaching programme in Sriganganagar district that sits next to the LoC in Rajasthan, his message to the coach Dheeraj Sharma was loud and clear: “Make him a batsman the world fears.” But 48 hours later, Jagdish’s dream ended even before it took flight. “My coach told him, ‘Sir, this fellow is made to be a spinner. Don’t stop him. He is my responsibility now.’ That was that,” Manav recalls the start of his cricketing career.
At a time when India are scouting the next rung of spinners in Tests, the 22-year-old Suthar is high on the pecking order. On Friday, playing for India C in the Duleep Trophy, he became only the second spinner to pick up a five-wicket haul at Anantapur, a venue that has historically aided the seamers. It is the sort of performance that would take him closer to a national call-up, with the selectors keenly following his upward trajectory. Like Dheeraj a decade ago, those in decision-making corridors are gushing over Suthar’s traits.
A silky action, drift, guile, turn, variations—Suthar has all the tricks that can make him successful at the top. After being hit all over the ground by Axar Patel on Day 1, on the second day Suthar bounced back just as India D were appearing to seize the fixture. At 121/3, Devdutt Padikkal was in counterattack mode. But Suthar came in and put the speed breakers. “To get wickets, I’d have to contain them first. That’s what I did,” Suthar told The Indian Express. “After the first innings, I figured that I’d have to slow down a bit to get some turn, which would be handy with the bounce on offer. Each pitch is different, so how you use your skillset is what matters,” he said.
Stumps on Day 2!
A riveting day’s play ends!
Manav Suthar led India C’s fightback with a fifer after brisk fifties from Captain Shreyas Iyer and Devdutt Padikkal.
India D move to 206/8, lead by 202 runs.#DuleepTrophy | @IDFCFIRSTBank
Scorecard ▶️ https://t.co/PcAyYzJ9W7 pic.twitter.com/EdF20mAkGt
— BCCI Domestic (@BCCIdomestic) September 6, 2024
In the 15 overs Suthar sent down, his five wickets captured his strengths. Padikkal was undone by the bounce, KS Bharat was beaten in the flight, Ricky Bhui was trapped in front with an arm-ball. Tail-enders Saransh Jain and Arshdeep Singh offered no resistance. For Suthar, everything went according to the plot. “In the time I’ve spent watching Ashwin and Jaddu bhai, I’ve noticed how they vary their seam position, trajectory and speed to adjust to different pitches. Just because seamers were getting wickets, I can’t say there isn’t much help for spinners. So I was backing my skillset, and believed I could do it here,” Suthar says.
Suthar had no reason to not believe in his skillset. During a camp in Alur last year, he troubled Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav and KL Rahul. It was the first he was bowling to quality batsmen at nets, and more than those deliveries that troubled some of the best in the world, Suthar took home the feedback. “After the session, everyone kept telling me, ‘keep doing what you are doing, you will be here and you will be troubling a lot of batsmen’. It was a huge confidence booster for me because I’d seldom bowled to any of them before that camp,” Suthar recalls.
Not exposed to T20s
During the Alur camp, as Suthar went about troubling the star batsmen, the drift he produced with the white ball stood out. “If he could do this with white ball, then god help the batsmen with the red ball,” is how one of them in the team management reacted.
Manav Suthar with family.
“He is a gifted spinner,” his coach Dheeraj says. “The first aspect that struck me was how he gripped the ball. At 12, not many boys have that sort of grip. But he had to get a few other aspects right. He was getting good turn, but to make it effective, we worked on his body alignment a lot. It used to be a bit across earlier, but if you have to be successful at the highest level, you can’t have a faulty technique. So we started off by working on his alignment that allowed him to develop a repeatable action without any trouble,” Dheeraj says.
Once Suthar found a repeatable action, wickets arrived in a heap across all age-group levels. Dheeraj, wary of what playing white-ball could do to his career, allowed him to bowl only with the red cherry. It was only after he was picked for the Under-19 side tht Dheeraj finally let him bowl with a white ball. Even now, unless the domestic white-ball tournaments are round the corner, Suthar seldom bowls with the white-ball.
“I definitely feel he would make it big in red-ball because he is a natural fit. His temperament is made for the red ball. He is used to bowling long spells because in these parts you won’t get turning pitches. So if you have to be good, then you need to have all sorts of tricks up your sleeves. He is now getting the right exposure as well,” Dheeraj adds.
Having already made India Emerging team and the India A set-up, Dheeraj sent Suthar to Chennai to play the First Division cricket. “I wanted him to understand how he can bowl on spinning pitches as well. That is the most challenging one, to get it right on a pitch that takes a lot of turn. In Chennai, you will find all sorts of pitches. When he climbs to the top level, he has to be prepared,” he says. In the second innings in Anantapur, he showed he is indeed prepared.
