A total of 56 deliveries is all that Sachin Dhas faced in the first four games of India’s ongoing U-19 World Cup campaign in South Africa. No fault of his because he was batting down the order, having been assigned the role of a finisher. Dhas still left his mark in these games, his scores reading 26* off 20 balls, 21* off 9 balls, 20 off 16 balls and 15 off 11 balls.
If coach Hrishikesh Kanitkar and National Cricket Academy (NCA) chief VVS Laxman – he’s also with the team that has entered the final — entrusted the youngster from Maharashtra with this responsibility, it must have been because of his ability to hit a long ball. For Dhas, who turned 19 on February 3, to then show the versatility — he came in early and bailed the team out in the last two games — suggests he has all the attributes in white-ball cricket worth getting excited about.
He certainly caught former West Indies fast bowler Ian Bishop’s attention. “There’s something about Sachin Dhas. Something good,” Bishop, a commentator at the U-19 World Cup, said on X. In the semi-final against South Africa in Benoni on Tuesday, India were up against it at 32/4 in a chase of 245, against a South African attack well-equipped to exploit the conditions. Steep bounce and seam movement undid most of the Indian batters, but Dhas, walking in to bat in the 12th over with skipper Uday Saharan for company, exhibited the requisite technique and temperament to come out on top. A prominent feature of his 95-ball 96 was the pull that he repeatedly played with the ease of a top-order batter.
His coach wasn’t surprised though. “He has always batted at No.4,” Sheikh Azhar, who trains Dhas at a government stadium in drought-affected Beed, said over the phone. “In the first four matches, he didn’t get a chance to bat much. I asked him why he was playing lower down the order. He said, ‘It has been decided in the team meeting that I will be the finisher’. He took it positively saying that he will make it count wherever he bats. He has done that.”
Even when Azhar was receiving calls from friends fretting over India’s precarious position in the game on Tuesday, he didn’t feel the need to panic. “I have been seeing Sachin from his childhood. He thrives in such situations. He is mentally strong. He has been playing for Maharashtra in age-group cricket from the age of 12,” the coach said.
Dhas’s father, Sanjay, works with the Maharashtra health department, but a heavy dose of cricket has consumed his time for as long as he can remember. So, when the Dhas household welcomed a baby boy in 2005, Sanjay had little ambiguity about the career path he would prefer his son to take.
“My wife and I were kabaddi players. But I like cricket very much. I also used to play cricket. But I wasn’t able to do much in the game because I didn’t have that much talent. Even before Sachin was born, I thought that my child should become a cricketer and play for India. I was such a big fan of Sachin Tendulkar that I never missed a game of his. I named my son after him,” Sanjay said.
There were limitations to pursuing cricket in Beed that Dhas had to overcome though. “There aren’t good facilities in Beed. Azhar sir used to run his club at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Stadium, which was the only ground,” Sanjay said. “There were matting wickets. Apart from Aurangabad, there were no turf wickets in the Marathwada region. When Sachin came back after playing for Maharashtra U-14 for the first time, the coaches there said he should play on turf wickets to improve on his drawbacks and become better. That is when I spoke to Azhar sir and helped prepare six turf pitches at the ground in Beed.”
It is on these turf pitches that Dhas has honed his wide array of strokes. His horizontal bat shots in particular mark him out from some of his teammates who seem to have limited scoring options against the short ball on Tuesday’s evidence. Ask Azhar about his ward’s range and he says: “We’ve been working on his ability to hit from the start. We knew that the facilities aren’t good in Beed. So, if he has to stay ahead of the boys from Mumbai and Pune, his practice has to be that much better. Even when he was 14, I would make him play U-19 bowlers. And he has perfected every shot by playing thousands of deliveries.”
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