PLAYER DIARIES
Follow Us“To be part of the Indian team and win the first-ever World Cup for us,” Asha Sobhana told Sportstar about her dreams.
That’s all you need to understand Asha Sobhana at a deeper level. She might be 32, and she might belong to the early 2010 generation, but over the years, she has burned the midnight oil to keep that hunger alive and kicking within.
On the field, she is as electric and eccentric as an 18-year-old, full of the world, with just one goal: wanting to lift that title. But what has kept her relevant despite making her domestic debut in 2006?
Her underlying passion for the sport has made her move out of her comfort zone from Kerala to Puducherry. That passion brought her to Bengaluru when she was picked at the inaugural Women’s Premier League (WPL) auction.
Getting to Bengaluru is one thing, and sealing your place as an all-time great is another.
Sobhana understood that five wickets weren’t going to make the cut. That’s when a certain Laxman Sivaramakrishnan helped her understand her art in a more intricate fashion.
“I am available to coach Asha, the leg spinner, free of cost because I believe she is a natural talent and very important to know what they are doing right and do it consistently. She could be a match-winner for India #WPL2023,” the former Indian leg-spinner tweeted.
It took less than 24 hours for the leg-spinner to get in touch with him. A year later, the duo worked closely together just before the start of the 2024 WPL, and the result of that camp was visible during the season when she broke through the ceiling to be the best spinner.
So, what changed?
"It was about making small technical corrections and then how to approach the game and visualization. [We focussed on] the technical and mental part of the game because we had three days and two sessions each day. We had very little time to work on it, but she grasped everything very quickly, and she started brilliantly in the WPL," Sivaramakrishnan told The New Indian Express.
Less than two days into the 2024 WPL season, there she was, shining like a star, showing her moves like one would when they have got the most frags in a Fortnite (First-Person shooter game) lobby. Within an hour, she already equalled her 2023 WPL tally of five wickets. She didn’t just pick up five wickets in a single match, she turned the entire contest on her head in just minutes.
Smriti Mandhana might have had the most experienced of bowlers at her disposal, but the fact that she turned her attention towards Sobhana shows you why India have placed their faith in the Kerala leg-spinner. Bowling the 17th over of the run-chase, Sobhana showed something that perhaps defines her bowling the most: the fight.
Over the next six balls, she showed the world what she was made of: the zip, the flight and the length where most batters in world cricket have struggled, the hard length area. That’s what has made her lethal, and that’s exactly why the selectors have insisted on picking her despite only making five appearances overall.
To simply break it down into simpler terms, only three leg-spinners have played for India in the last two years - Poonam Yadav, Asha Sobhana and Devika Vaidya. While Yadav hasn’t quite looked the same since her drop from the national team, Vaidya didn’t inspire the Indian selectors in the same manner as Sobhana.
Sobhana?
Since the start of the WPL, the country has produced only six leg-spinners. The noticeable difference is quite vast. All of the other leg-spinners in the country (Parshavi Chopra, Devika Vaidya, Poonam Khemnar, Poonam Yadav, S Keerthana) together have picked up just four wickets.
Sobhana alone has 17 wickets.
Across the entirety of the 2024 WPL season, the leg-spinner was tidy in her line and length, bowling 69.2% of deliveries in the good areas. What makes her quite tough to pick as a batter is her ability to flight the ball from quite a straight angle.
That flight has deceived seven batters in the last WPL season. Shafali Verma, Marizanne Kapp, Jess Jonassen and Deepti Sharma were some of the victims of Sobhana’s flight during the season.
Her ability to bowl across phases, with six wickets at the end, is already enticing enough for India to consider. Given that they will be playing in Sharjah and Dubai, two conditions where the leg-spinners have found good purchase (from a limited sample size), India would be looking to unleash her at the highest level.
“She [Sobhana] obviously will be told a lot of things but has to stick to the basics, which is flighting the ball and getting it to rip and challenge the batters. She’s got to be the wicket-taking option that leg spinners got to be, and I don’t see any reason why she can’t succeed if she sticks to the basics and follows her plan. She will be critical. If she hears everything told to her and doesn’t stick to her plans, the results might be different,” WV Raman told Cricket.com in an exclusive conversation.
Nearly 200 cricketers have played for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), but none have become an overnight sensation as quickly as Sobhana. If someone can handle the pressure of RCB fans with such ease, the World Cup shouldn’t be as big a problem.
The real deal-breaker is the fact that she still has a bit of mystery surrounding her, given that she hasn’t played enough international cricket. But rest assured, the stage remains the same for Sobhana; the entire world is her canvas, ready to be painted.
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