When the selectors picked Nitish Kumar Reddy for the T20s against Bangladesh, his father Mutyala wondered if the comeback call had come too soon. “Only rarely do we see players who are injured get back into the team straightaway. We know how difficult it is for an opportunity to come again,” he says.
He was referring to the hernia that heartbreakingly ruled his son out of the Zimbabwe tour, the day after he was picked, last June. He remembers those minutes that dragged on like months. “The squad was announced and within 24 hours this bad news came. Everyone felt sad. We did not know how big the injury was and was worried if he could get an opportunity for India again,” he recounts.
But Nitish was too precious a talent—he belongs to the scant tribe of seam-bowling all-rounders in the country—to be hidden. He was picked for the Bangladesh series, and in his second outing showed that the opportunity had not come too soon. Heartbreaks and resurgence, though, has been an inseparable undercurrent of his life, like the movies of his Tollywood idol, Mahesh Babu. In a show with a regional channel, he reproduces his favourite line from his hero’s movie, roughly translated as, “Blocks could clog my life, but I will find my own paths.” It rings true in his life too.
The first adversity of his hitherto smooth life came when he was 12. His father, an employee at Hindustan Zinc was transferred from Visakhapatnam to Udaipur in Rajasthan. “Since I did not know Hindi, I was in two minds whether to go or not,” he says. The dilemma stewed in his mind for weeks, so much so that Nitish had begun to take Hindi lessons. But eventually his father decided to stay back, not because of linguistic barriers, but “only because of Nitish’s cricket.” It invariably meant he had to resign, although he and some of his colleagues staged a fruitless dharna. “Though he hadn’t played for the state, he was playing well in district cricket. His coaches insisted that Nitish had a good future. So I decided to quit the job and shape his career,” he says.
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The extended family criticised the decision, and they ran into financial troubles, as Nitish’s father’s business forays collapsed. His first cricket gear was his uncle’s gift, since his father couldn’t afford one. But Mutyala was convinced his son would prosper in cricket.
The positive was that he could pick-up and drop him everyday from the VDCA academy to home. One of the coaches, Srinivas Reddy remembers him as a quiet but eager boy, “willing to practise and train.” “Right from that age, he was driven and committed, never missing a training session,” he says.
In his formative years, Nitish was a batman who occasionally bowled seam-up. His body of willow work was gargantuan. In the 2017-18 edition of the Vijay Merchant tournament, he amassed 1237 runs including a quadruple hundred against Nagaland, which he then regretted that he could not convert to a 500, in just eight outings. But when he moved to the ACA Academy in Kadapa, former Services captain Charles David Thomson reasoned that a seam-bowling all-rounder stood better prospects of climbing rungs than a batsman, well-stocked as they are country-wide.
Besides, he was so naturally fit—morning jogs along the enormous Vizag coastline, one of his old habits, certainly helped—that he recovered fast. Explains coach Nirmal Kumar, another influential figure in his life: “No matter if he bowled or batted, his recovery used to be quick because he always gave prime importance to fitness. Even when we used to give breaks Nitish always worked in gyms. He didn’t get tired quickly. In junior cricket, he was the best batter and bowler. So as he grew we started to use him in both departments.”
Even as a youngster, he observed his senior players. He got the fitness fetish from his idol, Virat Kohli. Not just the master batsman, he used to keenly watch senior players. “He always played in an age-group higher than his age, so played a lot with the seniors. He used to observe their game, routines and diet,” his father chimes in.
He now follows the diet advised by Hardik Pandya. “He always takes advice from Hardik. The diet which Nitish is following at the moment has been advised by Hardik. It is almost a similar diet,” Reddy senior says.
He is touted as Hardik’s successor, rather ambitiously. There is no shortage of skills. He bowls lively medium pace, can shape the ball away, and nip the ball inwards with a conventional seam position and brisk pace. He has conventional attacking shots, accentuated by a sweet bat-swing, as well as a sturdy defensive technique. Nirmal, hyperbolic as childhood coaches could be, draws a lofty parallel: “From his early days he wanted to bowl quick, just like Kallis. Whatever kind of cricketer Kallis is, Nitish has the same capabilities.”
Realistically, at 21 and just two IPL seasons and as many T20Is into his career, he is still a study in progress. His SRH captain Pat Cummins delves on a virtue of him that could take him heights. “He always wants to learn, always looks to value-add some part of his game,” he said in a post-match chat last season.
One of those facets has been his power-hitting. In his first season with the SRH, he realised the need to enhance his power-hitting range. So dialled Nirmal’s services again. “He always had the ability and power but last year we worked extra with him. We have worked on the downswing a lot, where you make the impact for the ball to for a six where you have to use that power, when you have to do that body weight transfer, and how much speed you have to use for the distance you want to get we worked on these things,” he explains.
At Kotla, he heaved seven sixes with the ease of humming his favourite Telugu songs, which he listens before a game. Before I go to the ground, I listen to songs that lift my energy. No melodies, no sad songs, but those with high energy,” he says. Watching him freewheel 74 off 34 balls in Delhi was akin to listening to a groovy Telugu song, filling the audience with an irresistible energy.
