Tushar Deshpande was unlikely to be at the top of too many lists of top wicket-takers in the IPL before the season started.

That's not a comment on Deshpande's abilities, but before 2023, he had featured in only seven IPL matches across two seasons. He is right up there, though, joint at the top with 17 wickets - the same as Mohammed Shami - and that's because he has used his pace as well as the variations in his repertoire - the offcutter and the knuckle ball, especially - to good effect to fix one of the gaps in the Chennai Super Kings line-up.

"I am not going there to learn, firstly," Deshpande had said of his expectations from the IPL on Coffee, Cricket Aani Barach Kaahi ahead of the 2020 edition, when he found an IPL team - Delhi Capitals - for the first time. He was 24 then. He had played all domestic formats for Mumbai already.

"If I want to play for India in the future, I cannot look at IPL as a place to learn. I will look to grasp from whatever inputs I will get. But I will go there to deliver. I will be looking to execute whatever I have prepared."

Deshpande speaks very little. But those words revealed a lot about the person that he was - is - and how he thinks about himself and his game.

And for CSK this year, Deshpande has exhibited his preparedness for the big moments early in the competition. First, when he got rid of Rohit Sharma with a nip-backer after being hit for a four and a six in the space of four balls. Then, again, in the same game when he dismissed Tim David with change of pace after he was pumped for 6, 4, 6 in the three previous deliveries. Later, against against Lucknow Super Giants, he kept his calm in the face of an onslaught from Nicholas Pooran to have the batter caught at long-off when the game was in the balance.

Deshpande has carried his confidence from Mumbai's Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy win, where he regularly bowled in the powerplay as well as at the death and returned 17 wickets at an economy of 6.72 - his best in a T20 tournament.

****

As an eight-year-old, Deshpande played at Subhash Maidan in Kalyan, a distant suburb of Mumbai. Seeing his interest in the game, his father Uday sent him for the Under-12 trails for Shivaji Park Gymkhana in Dadar, 48 kilometres away from home. Deshpande, who travelled there in a local train with his kit bag in tow, saw that the queue for bowlers was shorter than that for batters, and joined that. There was no looking back thereon.

That day, it was Deshpande's ability to be nippy that had caught the eye of former Mumbai left-arm spinner and renowned coach Padmakar Shivalkar, Capitals' current assistant coach Pravin Amre, and Sandeep Kawle, head coach of the Mumbai women's side in the last two seasons.

It was the first batch of the academy that also had the likes of Shreyas Iyer and Shardul Thakur, who have since gone on to play for the national side, and also Aakarshit Gomel, Siddhesh Lad and Harmeet Singh. And it didn't start too well for Deshpande.

"He had the spark, and we felt he could do well as a pace bowler. But he came crying once his Under-19 coach told him that he can never be a fast bowler," Amre told ESPNcricinfo. "I told him, 'we believe in you, but do you believe that you can bowl fast?' He said yes. I told him to write it on his bag, take it seriously, work towards it and not get demoralised. That was an important moment in his career."

Kawle worked on Deshpande's basics - the run-up, the action, the fitness - and taught him never to compromise on his pace.

"He is a soft-spoken and polite man, but he has the anger and the fire in his body language that is in-built in a fast bowler," Kawle said. "He has the aggression. If someone hits him for a boundary, raag dokyaavarun jaata (he gets very angry). But we used to tell him not to compromise on his pace. If you do that, you can never become a fast bowler. Now he has the variations which are needed to be unpredictable in T20s."

In 2015, just a month short of 20, Deshpande first represented the senior Mumbai side - after having played for their Under-16 and Under-19 teams - in a T20 against Odisha.

Come the 2016-17 season, his was a last-minute selection in Mumbai's Ranji Trophy squad as a replacement for Thakur, who had been called up to India's Test side, and Deshpande immediately left a mark with a four-wicket haul - including dismissing Dinesh Karthik - on the opening day against Tamil Nadu in Rohtak, and returned 21 wickets in the competition in 14 bowling innings.

In the quarter-final, though, he suffered a stress fracture of the ankle, which he aggravated when he tried to rush back to action. The result was that he was out for about six months. It was around the same time his mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a battle she would lose two years later.

In October 2018, a month after Deshpande had made his List A debut for Mumbai in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, Amre got a phone call. It was from former India cricketer Subroto Banerjee, who was then coaching Bihar.

"He called me up and said he saw a bowler who dismantled their batters with just pace," Amre recalled. "He picked up five wickets [in the Vijay Hazare quarter-final in 2018-19]. Mumbai were winning the Ranji Trophy [comparatively more] but had won the one-dayers after a long time, and Deshpande's contribution was a big one."

Despite injury setbacks in 2018-19 - he suffered a hamstring injury in the Ranji match against Gujarat - Deshpande had a productive season. He had picked up 15 wickets in Mumbai's first Vijay Hazare win since 2006-07, 17 wickets in four Ranji matches and 19 in the Mushtaq Ali Trophy that season, which led to a call-up for the India A series against Sri Lanka and South Africa at home.

Thakur and Deshpande are seen as similar bowlers in Mumbai cricket. In Amre's words, "Shardul used to swing it a lot while Deshpande was more of a hit-the-deck bowler." But Deshpande has had an issue with bowling front-foot no-balls.

Deshpande's first red-ball game for Mumbai was as Thakur's replacement, and it so happened that CSK acquired Deshpande after Thakur became too expensive for them in the IPL 2022 auction - they had to opt out after going up to INR 7 crore.

But before that, Deshpande was selected at his base price in the IPL auction in 2020 and only played five games for Capitals that season, picking up three wickets. Ben Stokes, now his CSK team-mate, was Deshpande's first IPL wicket. And while he went unsold in the auction in 2021, he was still part of CSK as a net bowler.

Come 2023, there was a bunch of injuries in the CSK camp: they had Kyle Jamieson and Mukesh Choudhary ruled out before the season started, while Stokes, Simarjeet Singh and Deepak Chahar picked up injuries during the tournament. That has given Deshpande regular games, and the opportunity to bowl in the death overs as well as have short bursts at the start, and he has capitalised.

Having played all ten matches for CSK so far this season, and his 17 wickets includes seven in the last four overs, again the joint-most for anyone to have bowled at least four overs at the death. Deshpande's economy rate of 12.70 during that period has been on the higher side, but Amre is still pleased with the efforts.

"He was with DC where he didn't have a good year but got the experience," Amre said. "He is a learning boy, a good student of the game and he took it in his stride. Good to see him do well this season, and I am sure MS Dhoni has a big role to play in that.

"For an Indian fast bowler, pace is important, and he has that. To come from a simple household from Kalyan and do this well, I am sure his father, who supported him throughout, must be very proud."

Deshpande might have been a tad late to enter the glitzy world of the IPL, but in his first season as a regular in the XI, he sure is leaving an impression. In the process, he has perhaps ensured that his is not the last name you would imagine topping the bowling charts going forward.

Tushar Deshpande has the pace the wickets and the makings of a bright future

2023-05-05 14:34:21