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In three years, he had made his way into the Indian squad for the U19 World Cup in South Africa and last year, the then 17-year-old broke Pakistan great Javed Miandad‘s record by becoming the youngest player to score 250 runs in first-class cricket with his 266-run knock in Ranji Trophy for Jharkhand.
But he made one of the most eye-catching headlines at the IPL auction in Mumbai on Tuesday when he was bought for Rs 7.2 crore by the Delhi Capitals.
That the Capitals were on the lookout for an Indian to add to the back-ups for a recovering Rishabh Pant was known. But their selection of the 19-year-old came as a surprise despite the scouting around him in this season’s domestic limited-overs tournaments.
A number of those scouts were impressed by the sheer ferocity of his unbeaten 37-ball 67 in a Vijay Hazare Trophy match against Maharshtra – a match-winning knock while coming into bat for Jharkhand at No. 6.
Kushagra’s father had built a library of cricket books at their home in Jamshedpur with the dream of teaching his son the technicalities of the game and helping him reach the heights that he had once dreamt for himself.
“Everything that the greats have written, be it Lewis, Bradman or Waugh, I got it somehow. I would go and watch people at the nets and try to figure out the techniques and then get back and read what the books had to say about the same. There were at least 60-70 shots and techniques that I made a list of. Each day, I would make Kumar practice one of them,” Shrikant Kushagra, Kumar’s father and a district commissioner in the GST department, had earlier told TOI.
The father-son duo’s perseverance and commitment towards the game seem to have borne fruit on Tuesday as the wicketkeeper-batter, who has scored 700 runs at an average of 46.66 in List A games, was considered a replacement for Pant by the Capitals staff led by Ricky Ponting.
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