When Ravindra Jadeja bowled India to victory at Mohali on Saturday, an elderly man felt extremely happy in this bustling north Kerala town.
That man, Debu Mitra, had always egged the all-rounder on to bowl, even when he wanted to concentrate more on batting.
He was the coach of Saurashtra and had guided Jadeja on his way to stardom from a junior cricketer.
“There were times when Jadeja felt unsure of his abilities as a spinner, like the time he was taken apart by batsmen in the Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies in 2010, but I convinced him that he could play for India only as a bowler,” Mitra, who is here as the coach of the Tripura Ranji Trophy team, said.
“I always knew that he had the talent to be an excellent left-arm spinner.”
He said Jadeja could win more Test matches for India. “He would murder you on turning tracks like the one at Mohali,” he said.
“He might not be a great turner of the ball, but he is deadly accurate.”
The former Bengal batsman also recalled the application Jadeja showed as a batsman. “Once he came up to me and said ‘I want to play for India in whites’, and I told him that he should then stop lifting the ball while batting at the nets,” he said.
“He did that. He was a transformed batsman and went on to make three triple hundreds in Ranji Trophy that season.”
Jadeja, though, isn’t the only source of joy for Mitra, now. There is also Cheteshwar Pujara, who got runs in both the innings on a difficult track.
“I am very proud about Cheteshwar, too,” he said. “Right from the first time I saw him as the Saurashtra coach, I knew that he was a special talent.”
How Mitra turned Saurashtra into a Ranji Trophy finalist from a team that played in the lowest division is one of the more fascinating stories in domestic cricket of recent times.
Besides Pujara and Jadeja, his well-known wards also include Devang Gandhi and Jaydev Unadkat, but the most famous of them remains Sourav Ganguly.
“When I first saw Sourav, as a 14-year-old, he was more of hard-hitting batsman than the silken elegance he later became,” he recalled.
“I still believe he retired prematurely. As India’s best ever captain, he should have got more respect.”