The Ashok Sharma Story: A Tale Of IPL’s Ever-Expanding Impact

17 years since its inception, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has become an annual function of Indian cricket. It’s not just a small ecosystem of cricketers getting together to play in a cash-rich, glitzy league, it’s a festival of Indian cricket where the biggest stars in the cricket world descend to dazzle with their proverbial dance on the cricket pitch. 

However, amidst the bright burning stars, there are also domestic players who are just emerging on the national cricket scene. Many of these players who are selected in the squad don’t get a game on most occasions to show what they are made of. But go to an IPL team camp, and you’ll find these unknown faces toiling hard in the nets. 

A few years down the line, some of them might even become the next cricketing sensation of the country, but until they do, they make the backbone of any IPL squad. However, for obvious reasons, we hardly come to know about the stories of these players who are yet to feature in a big game. We are even more unaware of how these players grow and develop after being associated with IPL teams throughout the year, and not just the season. 

Ashok Sharma, the 22-year-old right-arm pacer who’s currently a part of Rajasthan Royals’s squad, is one such player. After being a net bowler for two years, RR picked him in the auction this year and completely changed his life. 

Coming from a remote village near Jaipur, Ashok used to love bowling with a tennis ball in his school. He was showing signs of brilliance with his pace, and the boy’s talent was evident to his family as well. However, in a nation that is still among the lower-income countries of the world, sports isn’t a straightforward choice, with the journey and destination both being abjectly unpredictable on the field. 

Path to the Royals 

That’s when his family made a decision that only one of Ashok or his brother Akshay, who’s elder to him by two years, could take up the sport. The other will have to go the traditional route and find a job to help the family. Ashok’s brother made that sacrifice for him and took his sibling to a cricket academy in Jaipur. 

“It was my elder brother by two years, Akshay, who supported me and sent me to the academy,” Ashok told Cricket.com in an exclusive conversation. 

“Since our family had decided that only one of us could play cricket, he sacrificed his own career in the sport and pushed me ahead. At the time, we were facing financial problems, and we could afford only one person’s academy and hostel fee. He came to the academy and dropped me at the academy, which is around 40 km from my village.”

At the academy, the teenager Ashok bowled with such pace and intensity that coach Vivek Yadav was immediately impressed. 

“Vivek Yadav, the coach at the academy, was really impressed with the way I was bowling. In fact, he made me play a tournament just after two days of joining the academy properly,” the right-arm pacer said with a big smile on his face. 

However, that’s when a rude shock was awaiting the teenager who came with stars in his eyes — he was lost in the jungle of cricketing talent that exists in India everywhere. From district-level cricket to the state level, climbing levels wasn’t as easy for him because the entry barrier was too huge. 

“I really struggled for two years in the middle, where I didn’t even play district cricket, forget state,” Ashok remembered with a sombre expression. 

“Even my family was getting restless as nothing was coming out of my cricket then. But I was really adamant and requested them to allow me one more year, and if I’m not able to make it, then that’s it.”

With the realities of his life situation floating in front of his face, Ashok had to make some changes. Old methods wouldn’t have cut it for him with the deadline of a year hanging over him. As it turned out, that’s exactly what the spirited youngster did, so much so that even the pandemic couldn’t keep him away from the sport. 

“I focused really hard that year, worked on my bowling and the smallest of things around my game. Then only I was able to make the State Under-19 side,” the Rajasthan pacer said. 

“But I didn’t get many chances and could play only two games as the pandemic also arrived. However, the seniors in the team, especially Akash Singh, who also plays for Lucknow in the IPL, really guided me a lot during this time.

“In the lockdown, I used to play cricket with my brother and cousins in the field behind our house in the village. So I was able to get some basic practice out of there. However, I didn’t get to play any professional cricket at that time,” Ashok said. 

Red Bull’s Speedster initiative in 2021 was Ashok’s big break, which propelled his career forward at the rate of knots. With a multinational brand working in Rajasthan to find pace talent, Ashok didn’t need to go through the state team pipeline in Rajasthan. He was getting a chance at visibility in a setup through an alternate route that came like a blessing for him. However, it was certainly a ‘challenge’ for Ashok to make the cut in the Speedster trials. 

“In 2021, there was a Red Bull Speedster trial in Jaipur. I gave that trial and was selected. However, it was quite a challenge, though, as around 250 kids had come for the trial and I hadn’t experienced anything like that before,” Ashok said. 

“From there, I became a net bowler for RR that season. It was really surreal for me that I’ll get to bowl to players I have seen bat on television. So I was really elated after the selection.”

The auction and experience in RR

As a net bowler, Ashok got the opportunity to bowl at some of the best batters in the league, including Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson, etc, and he made the most out of it. 

“In the nets in 2021, I bowled to everyone, from Buttler to Yashasvi [Jaiswal] bhaiya and Sanju bhaiya. Once Sanju bhaiya also came up to me and told me that he really liked the way I was bowling, and asked me where I was from,” the right arm pacer told with a big smile. 

However, just the RR skipper asking the location of your village isn’t enough for you to make it to the IPL. Despite being a net bowler for RR for two years, there was no guarantee that Ashok would have been picked by the Royals when the auction. 

But of course, hope reigns supreme over logic! 

“My brother sat for two days straight to watch the auction. He used to watch right from the start till the very end,” the pacer said when asked about how his family reacted to the auction. 

“We were hopeful in our family, but of course we didn’t had any knowledge if RR would bid for me or not. Once I was picked, my parents were the happiest. Brother was also really happy as he has been with me right from the start and even sacrificed his own career to grow my own.”

Ahh, the catharsis his family might have felt with his selection in the auction! 

However, with hardly any first-class cricket experience under his belt, there was a lot that Ashok needed to learn in the RR setup, and that’s where the coaches and the entire setup gave him the belief that it’s his talent that has brought him here, and he should keep backing himself. 

Meanwhile, Ashok kept working hard, and has even stayed away from his favourite Ras Malai for almost 1.5 years now. 

“I don’t want to be limited to bowling in a particular phase. The captain can ask you to bowl at any point in the game, and you have to be ready for it. So I’ve never had this thing where I want to just focus on one phase of the game as such,” he said when asked about his modus operandi during training. 

“I learnt slower bouncer from Sandeep [Sharma] bhaiya. I’m also working on a few other variations. We had practised really hard in the pre-season camp, and there’s a lot of video preparation and planning involved as well for specific batters.”

While Ashok Sharma might not have got a game for RR this season, his story is a big case point as to how the alternative pipelines of player development and progress are being made in the cricketing ecosystem of the country due to the IPL. If that isn’t a parameter of stupendous success for the tournament off the field, probably nothing else is. 

Meanwhile, Ashok Sharma has only begun. Until the next act of his tale begins, we wait and watch and hope that his talent continues the meet the opportunities it deserves.