TimesofIndia.com at Milanpur: “Kya kamal jund nickali hai ayse haat se” (there is magic in his hand whenever the ball leaves him). This is the unanimous observation about Manav Sothar by everyone who has seen him closely, be it a teammate, a coach, a selector or the current Test captain of India. Shabman Gul.“In one of the U-23 games, a fielder nearby told me that you can hear Reaves when he bowls. He puts a lot of Reaves on the ball, which is unreal in this day and age of cricket,” said Anshu Jain, the current head coach of Rajasthan, under whom Sothar played at U-19 and U-23 left-arm level. The spinner took six wickets on debut. “It’s natural, it’s unique. No current cricketer will tell you that he wants to play Test cricket for India and that the IPL is not his ultimate goal. He told me this when he was still a teenager. It’s remarkable,” Jain added.The 23-year-old, who was given the nod ahead of Harsh Dubey for the one-off Test against Afghanistan, became only the tenth Indian bowler and seventh Indian spinner to take five wickets on Test debut.When Gujarat Titans took part in the 2024 Sothar, he impressed everyone with his bowling. The one who was particularly impressed by his talent was the captain Shubman Gill. Although the Rajasthan spinner has only played a handful of matches for the Titans, he has been told to be ready for an India call-up.Several sources following Soother’s development have maintained that he was tipped to make his Test debut against the West Indies last year at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. The selectors and team management wanted to play him ahead of Ravindra Jadeja but the veteran all-rounder got a lifeline after scoring 516 runs in England.“Sathar is someone who will get you wickets even on a flat track. He has so much skill that he doesn’t need much from the surface. Accuracy, revs, the right pace – it all makes him very quick. The selectors are very excited to get him going and talks started around him during the England tour. England got him another lifeline,” explains a source tracking the progress.
After India’s home series loss against South Africa, the team management decided against fielding the furious Turners. He wanted to play on the traditional tracks of the subcontinent and to do that required expertise in the field of spin.Over two days of bowling in the sweltering heat at New Milanpur, Sattar showed why he was considered special by many. Be it his oblique run-up, the way he angles the umpire, the trick, the drift, the dip, the flight, the revs and most importantly, those long hits – everything suggested that India had got a reliable spinner. At least in domestic situations where they want to play on sports pitches, where the ball starts rolling from day 3 instead of matches ending within nine sessions. And then the perfect “Tappa”.Sathar is not just a one-trick pony. He mixes his speed exceptionally well. His average speed was 89.90 kmph, his fast delivery hovered around 95 kmph and his slow one hovered in the mid-80s, all while maintaining an impeccable length. He bowled 72 balls at a good length, which accounted for 55% of his deliveries. Another 40 percent were full. Of the 132 balls he bowled, he hardly gave an inch to Afghanistan’s batsmen, which explains his miserable figures of 22-10-33-6.And hitting the spot is something he learned from his father Jagdish Sothar, a physical education teacher at a private school in Sriganganagar.“I was an off-spinner myself and when he bowled for hours with a tennis ball, I told him that if he wants to be a good spinner, he has to bowl at one place again and again,” Jagdish told the website after his son was handed his debut cap by Kuldeep Yadav at the stadium.Sattar spoke to broadcasters about “spot bowling” at the end of the game on Saturday.“I was only focused on how consistently I could bowl at one place,” he said.When asked about his skill and how he developed such consistency, he replied: “When I started playing, I used to spot-bowl as a busman from early morning until evening” (When I started, my focus was on spot bowling. As much as possible, I would practice spot bowling in the morning and evening).Sattar first grabbed the limelight after an impressive domestic season in 2022-23, during which he took 90 wickets in a year. He was Rajasthan’s highest wicket-taker in the Ranji Trophy with 39 wickets in six matches. Before that, he took 14 wickets in seven Under-25 ODIs and then 37 wickets in the CK Naidu Trophy.“After Rajasthan failed to qualify for the knockouts, he called me and asked, ‘Sir, can I play U-25? Little red ball and overs ho jae jain’ (Can I come and play U-25 cricket so that I can bowl more overs than the red ball?), recalls Anna.But his feats did not go unnoticed and no IPL franchise picked him up. A despondent Suthar called his childhood coach Dheeraj Sharma and said: “Sir, are you going to take the wicket?” (What is the point of taking so many wickets?)Sharma scolded his ward and asked him sternly if his aim was to play in IPL or for India. A soft reply came: “Sir, India.”After that, Suthar was picked by Gujarat Titans as a net bowler and as they say, the rest is history.The sample size is still small and the opposition relatively weak, but Sothar is certainly a breath of fresh air in India’s attempt to rebuild a battered domestic fortress in recent years.
