"People don't talk enough about patience" - Harshal Patel after impressive debut vs New Zealand

India fast bowler Harshal Patel has not just come a long way in terms of his cricket career, but he has also explored and re-discovered himself along the journey. The 30-year-old bagged a Player of the Match award on debut as India sealed the T20I series against New Zealand 2-0 with one match to go.

On one side, there is someone like Jasprit Bumrah, who represented India without playing a single first-class match. On the other hand, Harshal got his India cap 12 years after his first domestic game and after putting in the hard yards for a decade in the IPL.

Looking back at the journey, he was quite outspoken about how he had to work his way around odds and even turn some of those in his favor.

“So for me it was, the ability to differentiate between my skillset and things I could not do, things that my skillset and talent wouldn’t allow me to work on. So figuring that out and then decisions on the basis of that. And figuring out that certain things work really well for you, so you need to keep working on that and make it so good that even with the limited skill or limited options, you can make it work out and consistently execute that,” Harshal Patel said in response to a Sportskeeda query at the post-match press conference.

Harshal remarked that the biggest life lesson for him was patience. He highlighted the importance of sticking to one’s strengths even if the desired results don’t come along.

“And the second lesson, and probably the most underrated thing is, people don’t talk enough about patience. I feel progress doesn’t happen overnight – it’s a slow process, it’s a gradual process – and if you want to make a change and get better at something, you need to allow yourself enough time to sort of figure that out, how you are going to do that, and it’s going to take time.

“If you keep jumping from one place to another in your mindset, that’s not going to work for you. So I think patience and figuring out what you can do and what cannot do – in terms of your skill. Obviously you want to keep adding new skills to your repertoire, but at the same time, being cognisant of the fact that there are certain things that your talent won’t allow,” the Gujarat-born lad explained.

Harshal became the first uncapped bowler to win the Purple Cap (most wickets) in the IPL this year. And it’s only fitting that the move to draft him into the national side reaped instant rewards.

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“I will never be able to bowl consistently higher than 140” – Harshal Patel

Harshal Patel returned figures of 2 for 25 from 4 overs on his India debut

You look at Harshal Patel, and you don’t see an express pacer running in. He might not fit into the moulds of the Mohammed Shamis and Umesh Yadavs, but he certainly has the wherewithal to use criticism in a constructive manner and turn adversities around.

The Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) seamer revealed that he doesn’t have an ideal action to bowl fast or extract bounce off the surface. The 12 years of domestic cricket helped him figure that out, but he found ways to make optimum use of the skills he possesses.

“I don’t have a biomechanically perfect action, I have a massive lateral flexion at the point of delivery. So I always wanted to correct that because we are told that the height of your delivery also gets reduced and you won’t get a lot of bounce and all those things. But what I realised after playing 7-8 years of domestic cricket is, that lateral flexion gave me an angle which was difficult for batters to line up to,” Harshal elaborated.

Harshal Patel has now been earmarked as a death bowler who repeatedly foxes batters with his deceptive slower ball. He revealed that it is the same lateral flexion that makes his slower deliveries that much more effective and outswingers lethal in red-ball cricket.

“And that made my slower balls more effective, if I talk about red-ball cricket, that angle into the batsman allows me to bowl outswingers from a very tight line and beat the bat when it straightens. So I started looking at that as an advantage. And obviously being a fast bowler, you want to bowl fast, but then I realised that my speed ceiling is probably at 135. If I am bowling really well, in very good rhythm, I can probably clock close to 140, but I will never be able to bowl consistently higher than 140,” Harshal Patel concluded.

India and New Zealand will travel to Kolkata tomorrow to play the dead rubber on Sunday. It will be a perfect opportunity for Harshal Patel to enhance his confidence and make a case for him to man the death overs alongside Bumrah.

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