Tell him of Shikhar Dhawan and Madan Sharma remembers a 12-year-old weeping profusely for failing to get his team past the opponent’s total in an U-13 tournament final. That was in 1997, when the now rampaging Dhawan was a trainee at Sharma’s club.
This incident made the coach aware of a characteristic of young Dhawan. His hunger for runs was known to him, he was already a prolific scorer in age-group games. It was his hunger for success that the coach discovered that day.
“Right from his early days, he was a heavy scorer, so his appetite for runs was known to us. On that day we saw how keen to win he was. Then on, he started winning matches for us, taking the responsibility of the team on his shoulders,” recalls Sharma.
Former India and Delhi opener Aakash Chopra, too, remembers Dhawan when he was around 13. Like Sharma, Chopra too was struck by the youngster’s scoring ability. “At that age, you don’t judge anybody with an eye on his future, but Dhawan used to smash kids his age and score truckload of runs.”
Sharma got to see another side of Dhawan’s character when he failed to get selected for the Delhi U-16 side. “Instead of sulking, he became more determined and started scoring even heavily. Finally, he proved his point and got selected. These qualities made him different from other boys,” says Sharma.
After Delhi U-16, Dhawan went from strength to strength and made it to the U-19 World Cup squad in Dhaka in 2004. He scored three centuries, and after that people concerned started taking him seriously for the senior level. “We thought it was only a matter of time before he played for the Delhi senior side and he eventually made it. Here things became a mixture of good and bad for him. It was not a hunky-dory ride anymore,” says Chopra.
Dhawan’s smooth journey became bumpy after he made the senior level. The runs didn’t dry up totally but consistency became a problem. His name rarely figured on selection table. He made it to the national team in 2010, but became forgotten property soon after playing for the country.
“We were not sure how well he would do playing for India,” says Chopra. But as sometimes happens, Dhawan probably needed one chance to turn things around. It’s well known now what he did after getting that chance. The boy who wept for being unable to take his team to victory one day is making bowlers cry these days.