In this frozen hour of predawn, I summon the courage to slip out from under the quilts and begin my hike up to Triund, the meadowy cliff that also doubles as a balcony with the most spectacular view of the mighty Dhauladhar, some of the ice-capped mountains in this Middle Himalayan range closing in on 6000 metres in height. On the climb, the air is still and crisp with the wetness of recent snowfall, and the path is completely clear of tourists. My only encounter with another human being is halfway up, when a Himachali trader zooms past me despite his shoulders being saddled with a gunny sack filled with produce to sell to the tea-shops up above. When I finally get there, the last leg on the near-vertical slopes posing the most challenge for a pair of smoker’s lungs, a swirl of white cloud-mist curtains over the view of the Dhauladhar.
A black Bhutia dog escorts me on my descent, skipping over the loose stones with such practised precision that soon I am following him, the shaggy-maned boy patiently waiting for me at the shoulder of the cliffs and only picking up speed as I slowly catch up. He refuses the glucose biscuits I offer him but happily laps up the mineral water I pour into my cupped palm. When we reach the foothills of Dharamkot, he and I both stop to watch a game of volleyball being played by the locals, and before I know it, my temporary companion is trotting back up the mountain path.
Cricket – be it coordinated pick-up games or impromptu gully matches – is not often played on the streets or vacant plots of this state, a state that is literally named after the Sanskrit words for snow and mountain, the lack of presence of the national sport largely due to the uneven, undulating terrain. This is also perhaps why Himachal Pradesh has rarely produced talents that have gone on to play for India. Since it was founded in 1960, the HPCA has witnessed a grand total of precisely one cricketer successfully making the leap and representing the senior Indian team in international games: Rishi Dhawan. To find out just what it takes to emerge from such a system, one bereft of proper facilities, inspiring trailblazers or local cricketing heroes when he was growing up in the nineties, I reach out to Rishi, and he is more than happy to share stories from his incredible life. But there is one tale from his childhood that drips with the perspective needed to understand just how impossibly difficult it must’ve been to make the journey from Mandi to the Indian dressing room.
The town of Mandi, with a population of 25,000 when its census was last taken in 2011, lies approximately at the halfway point between Dharamshala and the state capital of Shimla to the south. It takes about four hours to get there from either direction on a good driving day, which essentially means one where there are no landslides. At the centre of Mandi’s valley is a multipurpose ground named Paddal, its outfield laden with sparse patches of brown grass and used for everything from badminton to “bandy” (the Bandy Federation of India is headquartered in Mandi). In the middle of the field, back in 2003 when Rishi was a thirteen-year-old, was a cement pitch used for cricket. “The closest turf wicket was in Sunder Nagar, about 25 kilometres away from Mandi by state transport bus, so main toh jyaadatar Paddal me hi practise karta tha [I preferred practising in Paddal], and I was so passionate about cricket that I used to practise daily, all year round, even in the rainy season of June, July and August, often all alone,” he says.
“Kuch bhi karta tha practise karne ke liye [I’d do anything to practise]. Place an object and bowl at it for hours; if some parts of the ground were too wet to run over, then I would shorten my run-up aur leg spin daalna start kar loonga [and start bowling leg spin]. So, when people ask me if it was self-belief that made me the first Himachali to play for India, I say no. It was passion. But sometimes, like on this occasion I am about to tell you about, my passion was tested, because sirf passion aap kitne der tak follow kar sakte ho? [how long can one only follow their passion?] What happened was there was very heavy rain on one July day, where even I couldn’t come up with any more innovative ways to play cricket all by myself, so I went to take shelter in this one room in Paddal, which had a roof and would double up as the dressing room during matches.
“There I was standing, dripping wet and watching the rain really pelting down on the outfield when the groundsman came up to me and struck up a conversation. What he said was, and I still remember it like it happened yesterday, ‘Beta, maine cricket mein aaj tak koi nikalta hua nahi dekha [Son, I have never seen anyone make it as a cricketer from here].’ He wasn’t talking about making it to the Indian team, he was talking about playing Ranji Trophy and tournaments like that, where players from Mandi were finding it hard to hold down a spot. The groundsman continued, ‘Tu itna dedicated hai, passionate hai. Mere experience se bata raha hoon [You are so dedicated, so passionate. I say this from my experience], why don’t you direct this passion into an individual sport, like badminton or TT? Cricket se kisi ka kuch nahi bana yahaan [cricket hasn’t made anything out of anyone from Mandi].’”
The fact that he made it tells me that the groundsman’s sage advice didn’t affect him a great deal. But just how little, I am now about to find out. “Mereko kuch farak hi nahi pada usse. Cricket ke liye passion alag hi tha [It made no difference to me at all, my passion for cricket was something else],” Rishi says. “Here’s the thing. The advice was sound. But I wouldn’t have switched even if god asked me to. Why? Because I wasn’t playing cricket to one day play for India. I was playing cricket because I loved cricket. That’s it. I was as happy playing cricket there in Paddal as I am now playing for any IPL franchise or when I found out I was picked for India.”
Right through junior cricket, Rishi would find himself the youngest player in the age groups, and this certainly seemed to be the case when his story resumed as a sixteen-year-old playing for Himachal in the semi-finals of the Cooch Behar Trophy, the country’s premier Under-19 tournament. Before that knockout game against Railways, young Rishi hadn’t scored a single 50 in the tournament, so he wondered, mostly for his confidence, if he should be playing with boys his own age at the Under-17s instead. “But the coach of that team, Anuj Pal Dass, insisted that I play the semi-final, so off I went to Ahmedabad. Four days later, my photo was in all the big newspapers. But the best part was I was fast-tracked into the senior Himachal side for the T20s.”
In those four days at Motera’s B-ground, on “a green track”, he scored 340 runs. “Back then we could win based on just first innings lead, so Anuj sir was in no mood to declare my innings. So, on and on I went. Mazaa aa gaya [I had a lot of fun].” In Dass, Rishi had found a kindred spirit, and their love for each other and the game would last the test of time. The pair, some sixteen years later in 2021–22, would go on to lead the state’s senior side to the Vijay Hazare Trophy, Himachal Pradesh’s only major domestic title.
Anyway, back to teenage Rishi, who began supplementing his hunger for scoring big runs with the ability to swing the ball at pace, and both those qualities made Kings XI Punjab place him in their wider squad for the inaugural edition of the IPL. Rishi was all of seventeen.
When he finally did get to play in the IPL, he was twenty-three. But Rishi made up for lost time by playing for Mumbai Indians and being a part of their title-winning eleven by featuring in both the eliminator and the final. “I didn’t get too many chances in the beginning because that MI side was loaded with international stars in all positions. There was of course Sachin [Tendulkar] paaji, playing his final IPL season, Ricky Ponting, Rohit Sharma, Harbhajan Singh, Lasith Malinga, Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Johnson, and the main all-rounder’s spot was Kieron Pollard. I knew I’ll get my chance but I also knew there wouldn’t be too many opportunities, so I had to grab whatever came my way,” he says, flowing into his narrative of how he didn’t let circumstances dictate his fate. “Halfway through the season, I heard our coach John Wright mention in passing that the management was looking at me as a possible new-ball bowler, because of my control and swing, they told me. But even after I was told that, I was still bowling with the old ball at the nets. Call it my small-town hunger or whatever, but I decided to do something about it instead of remaining frustrated quietly. I was thinking, ‘main aisa kya karoon ki nazar me aaoon [what can I do to be noticed]?’”
Excerpted with permission from Gully Gully: Travels Around India during the 2023 World Cup, Aditya Iyer, Penguin India.