How Rishabh Pant Inspired Akash Madhwal to Take up Professional Cricket

While Rinku Singh has forever been etched in the memory of cricket fans for his performance in Ahmedabad with the bat, Akash Madhwal turned up with a similar memorable performance with the ball in hand in the ongoing 16th season of the Indian Premier League.

Madhwal, who registered the best bowling figures ever in the history of IPL playoffs on Wednesday, had taken a major decision in his life for which a fair share of the credit goes to team India wicket-keeper batter Rishabh Pant.

Having played only Tennis-ball cricket until the year 2018, time had arrived for the Roorkee-born pacer to enter the domestic cricket foray with the Uttarakhand team.

How Rishabh Pant Inspired Akash Madhwal to Take up Professional Cricket

With no dream of making a name for himself in leather-ball cricket as such, Madhwal would often notice his neighbor Pant train hard and put in considerable amount of time in honing his cricketing skills.

A civil engineering graduate who also had a passion for the game, Madhwal only sought inspiration from Pant after he saw him training under the renowned local coach Avtar Singh in 2013-14.

As per ESPNCricinfo, as Pant gradually rose to prominence in the following years, the 29-year-old began his journey with the hard ball as well. The breakthrough moment for him would arrive in 2019, when Uttarakhand opened a trial of players for its senior domestic team.

As fate would have it, the 29-year old player would take a mere two months to find his name in the Uttarakhand squad participating in the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy.

Who Recommended Akash Madhwal to MI?

A couple of years after his Ranji Trophy debut in 2019, Madhwal was roped in as one of Royal Challengers Bangalore‘s reserve bowlers during the 2021 season.

He would soon manage to grab the attention of Mumbai Indians‘ video analyst CKM Dhananjay, who had watched him bowl at the Abhimanyu Cricket Academy in Dehradun. Resultantly, right-arm pacer would be invited for a trial by the franchise in Navi Mumbai.

A year later, he would join the MI squad as Suryakumar Yadav‘s replacement. Another year later, he would have the entire cricketing fraternity talking about his record-breaking five-wicket haul in the coveted league’s Eliminator fixture.