Akash Deep: Dealing with life’s curveballs, adding own swing

Tracing the tough path India’s toast of the Edgbaston Test win took, in the words of those who helped him rise

- Somshuvra Laha

Earlier this year, Akash Deep was in Pune with his seriously ailing brother-in-law, helping him to get back on his feet.

And every time he was in Lucknow during IPL, Akash spent sleepless nights keeping vigil ata Lucknow hospital where his elder sister, who the world now knows, was admitted for cancer treatment.

It’s as if despair is hell bent on shadowing a man, who had lost his father and brother in the space of six months. Saurasish Lahiri, the former Bengal skipper, recalls Akash once asking him, in a moment of helplessness, if there ‘would ever bea silver lining, “Tjust told him: ‘God burdens those who can shoulder this kind of responsibility’,” Lahiri says.

Akash soldiered on. This is a man who until he was 20 didn’t bow! with a leather ball full-time, and whose first season of structured cricket at a second-division club began without pay. To overcome those odds, make first-class debut happen at 23, Test debut at 27 anda first 10-wicket haul in just ‘over a year takes the kind of grit few possess.

One wouldn't know that seeing Akash though, as he quietly goes about his job. “Akash is like a sponge. He will observe everything, take mental notes and do his job silently. He isn'tsomeone to be swayed by one good performance,” says Lahiri, a former Bengal off-spinner who gave Akash his first trials as an U-23 bowler in 2017-18.