Shamik Chakrabarty, Mumbai
During the Vijay Hazare Trophy, Ayush Doseja had an opportunity to have an interaction with his idol, Virat Kohli. The great man kept things simple and spoke more about the mindset rather than technique. At the highest level, the game is 80 per cent mental.
“I have been idolising him (Kohli) since childhood,” said Doseja, after finishing with 949 runs, including four centuries, in 12 innings at an average of 105.44. This was his first season in First-Class cricket, and the 23-year-old made a mark to the extent of earning Delhi’s captaincy in the final group league game against Mumbai, as regular skipper Ayush Badoni was called to play for India A. Doseja, who was nurtured at Ravi Brothers Club under Ajay Chaudhary, capped it off with an unbeaten 159 off 230 balls to earn a draw for his team.
Back to Kohli’s gurukul, and the message to the youngster was: “If you are going to the ground, you have to give your 200 per cent, because you are representing Delhi. It’s no small thing. And if you want to play for India, you have to keep the same mindset. If you are going to the ground in any match, you don’t have to play in survival mode. You have to dominate and play.”
After the game against Mumbai, Doseja sought out Sarfaraz Khan and listened intently, as the Mumbai stalwart opened his heart and hearth to the boy from Rohini.
“He (Sarfaraz) was telling me, ‘if you keep your head down while batting on red-soil (pitches), it will be better. You will hit fewer casual shots. (It’s important) because the ball bounces more on red-soil pitches. I had a few reprieves during my innings and he was saying that if it was a bad day, I would have been out caught. So, you can vary your game a little on red-soil pitches vis-à-vis the back-soil ones. He is a big player in domestic cricket and I approached him for advice; how I can get better on red-soil pitches.”
Mumbai are through to the quarter-finals and will face Saurashtra in the last-eight. But it’s ironic that Delhi are out despite two of their batsmen topping the run-scoring charts. Sanat Sangwan, who scored a century in the first innings and won the Player of the Match award here, follows Doseja with 828 runs from 14 innings at an average of 69.00. Inexplicably, Delhi failed to secure even a single outright win over seven matches in Group D, finishing with nine points. What went wrong?
“I was talking to the coach, our spinners and fast bowlers can be better in red-ball cricket,” said Doseja. “We play good white-ball cricket. In red ball, when we come to play the Ranji Trophy next season, we will have to work on our bowlers. And we will have to bring on spinners who can take five wickets (fifers). We had this problem the whole season. We didn’t have spinners to take 10 (opposition) wickets. In this match also, it was a seaming wicket, and we thought that if the spinners stopped runs from one end, fast bowlers could have taken wickets from the other. But the runs didn’t stop, otherwise we would have won the first innings.”
The debut season has given Doseja a platform to build on. Now, as Kohli said, it’s about giving “200 per cent” in training and matches.
Brief scores: Delhi 221 and 407/6 declared (Ayush Doseja 159 not out; Himanshu Singh 3/86) drew with Mumbai 317
Points: Mumbai 3, Delhi 1
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