In the living room of Harshit Rana’s house in northwest Delhi’s Ghebra village are two trophies won by the fast bowler for fast bowling in the IPL. “This is my favourite,” said his father Pradeep, pointing to the gold plaque Harshit won with a speed of 146 kmph in the IPL final against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Chennai.
He has given his son a tough challenge. ‘I challenged him to bowl 150 km per hour. I told him the day you hit 150 kmph I consider you a player,’ says Pradeep.
Last month, he made a head-turning Test debut against Australia in Perth, making the perfect second fiddle to Jasprit Bumrah in India’s most heroic victory overseas. He has become an overnight sensation, with former players and pundits touting him as the next big thing in India’s fast bowling stable.
But the great quest continues – breaking the 150 km/h barrier. Ever since he picked a cricket ball for the first time in his life, in his teenage years, 150 was the magic number that drove father and son crazy. Pradeep, a former hammer thrower and weightlifter for the CRPF, gave his son a simple brief: “If you bowl 150 kmph, nobody can stop you from playing for India but if you bowl 125 kmph, even the local club won’t select you. “.
Pradeep Rana points to the fast bowler award won by Harshit in the IPL. (Express Photo Pratyush Raj)
Everything was linked to achieving the golden number – back breaking practice, ruthless rhythm and badtameezi That’s his biggest weapon, according to coach Shravan Kumar, the stares and grunts at batsmen, the kisses that blow them away, and an unbreakable spirit that got him through the dark days of injuries and poor predictions. “be disgraced (He is abusive). He is aggressive but in Harshit’s case he is extreme,” laughs the 72-year-old coach, who coached former India quick Ishant Sharma. “That is his strength. He has played all his cricket with that attitude and that has helped him reach this level,” he added.
After his exploits in the IPL, Harshit told this magazine that he could not contain his aggression. “I have always played cricket like this. “I am a fun person off the field, but on the cricket pitch I want to win, not make friends,” he said.
In essence, he carries a piece of Gevra’s unflappability onto the cricket field. Like a neighborhood straddling the Haryana-Delhi border, this village is more Haryana than Delhi in sensibility. Just 12 km down the road is Najafgarh, which produced Virender Sehwag, one of the best batsmen in the country. An hour takes you to the SAI center in Sonepat, where top athletes train for the Olympics. An obscure diversion off the wide highway takes you to the home of the country’s best wrestlers and boxers.
However, for a country that accounts for three-quarters of the Olympic medals, it has produced some real fast bowlers. Most of the cricketers in Delhi are either batsmen or medium pace bowlers. A real quick, Ishant Sharma, hailed from Dakshin Patel Nagar. Haryana churned out arguably the country’s greatest cricketer, Kapil Dev, but he wasn’t exactly on a tear. Thus, there is no one who wears a test stripe like Harshit, who is all bark and bite, all speed and fury.
Harshit Rana’s father Pradeep Rana playing. (special arrangement)
You’d imagine speedsters like him popping out of every corner of this pocket, all of them badtameezi and the liver (pluck), with the shoulder of Hercules and the will of Atlas. But surprisingly, they didn’t. In that sense, Harshit’s rise has great potential to turn the Olympic conveyor belt into a fast bowling hub. The youngsters fired up to run 150 km/h. After his talisman MS Dhoni, wearing gloves like the Ranchi youth, growing long hair and lobbing the ball around the cow circle.
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Pradeep points proudly to the entrance to his village, dedicated to the braves of Gevra, Flying Officer Sajjan Singh Rana and Pilot Jagmahendra Singh Rana. Just around the corner from the entrance is a 40-foot-tall tricolor and Pradeep proudly says, “My son plays for this flag.”
Pradeep had to stop the scooty at least a dozen times to greet his son’s well-wishers during the one and a half kilometer journey from the entrance of the Rana house. The elderly, Pradeep’s friends or the children playing in the dusty streets have found a new hero in Harshit. 13-year-old Atul, who was putting a kitbag in his father’s car, shouted to Pradeep: “Harshit Bhaiyya’s speech was welcomed in Perth (Tell Harshit, he was exceptional in Perth). The way of addressing Pradeep has also changed. He is now ‘Harshit’s father’.
The entrance to Ghevra village built by Harshit’s father in 2023 (Photo credit: Pratyush Raj)
At his house, his wife Geeta opens the door and shouts with joy: “Uproot the Gilli (He has taken his first wicket). Harshit took the first wicket against PM XI. As Pradeep sat on the big sofa in his living room, Geeta came out dancing.One more wicket (One more wicket). After a while she shouted again, “Thirdly too (Also 3rd wicket). Harshit finished with another one. “Today the thief did the lotus (He bowled exceptionally well today),” says Geeta. She is upset that her son was taken out of the attack because he chose five people. Pradeep consoled him:There are still four matches left (Four games still to be played).
However, Pradeep points out that he took 34 runs in his first four overs: “Engine is hot, time is running out (He took time to go).
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A mother, Geeta, shows a photo of Harshit, when he was two years old. “Yeh my child, it fulfilled our dream by playing India (My son has fulfilled our dream),’ she said while wiping her tears.
Harshit’s parents Pradeep and Geeta (Photo credit: Pratyush Raj)
Then moving his gaze towards Pradeep he told him “Harmful father“, a reference to the movie Dangal starring Aamir Khan, the story of a taskmaster father championing his daughters. “He was living his dream through my son. He was the task master. Harshit used to cry every night. I tried to stop him several times saying that this was not the right way to treat a child. He used to say, ‘Being a player is not easy. He told me that he wanted to play cricket. It’s sweat and blood and if he wants to leave, he can’. But Harshit never gave up,’ she says.
Pradeep started training Harshit at the age of 10. For the next eight years, they used to leave home at 5 am and return at 9 pm. ‘There is a drain nearby and Harshit used to flow beside it,’ recalls Pradeep.
He breaks the training. “After running for an hour, I take him to a field near the house. He would bowl 120 balls on the trot. I would send him to his school Ganga International. In the afternoons, I used to take him to the Rohtak Road Cricket Academy at Ramjas Sports Complex in West Patel Nagar, where he was training under Shravan Kumar. After training at 6:30 in the evening, he used to run five-seven laps on the floor. At 7.30 pm, we would leave the ground,” he says.
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Geeta brings out some of Harshit’s medical reports. He then recalls an incident where he took a 15-year-old boy to the magistrate near Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium. “We took him everywhere. He said to my husband, ‘Your son will never become a sportsman. Harshit’s father was furious,” she added.
Pradeep recounts Harshit’s ordeal, “It started in 2016 with pain in the lower knee joint. We took him to the Sports Injury Center in Safdarjung. They told me not to train. One day after returning home from the academy, he fell down the stairs. For two days he could neither move his legs nor get dressed by himself. he used to sayPapa, Yeh Zindagi Bhi Koi Zindagi Hai. I wish I had been killed (What kind of life is this? Better to die than live like this). He adds, “There is an Ayurveda hospital at Khera Dabar in Najafgarh. I took him there. He was admitted for 20 days. A few weeks later, the pain returned and he spent another week in the hospital.
Within a year, he not only regained his fitness but also played for Delhi U-19 the following year and was selected for the Ranji Trophy camp in 2019. “Ever since I saw him bowling in the Kotla nets, I told Awana (Parwinder). He can easily play 70-80 Tests for India,” says Narinder Negi, who was then the Delhi U-19 coach.
But in 2020, Harshit suffered a stress fracture in his lower back. “This was before covid. He was doing gym sessions at home during the lockdown and it aggravated his injury. In September 2020, we went to Dr Saif in Gurugram. After the MRI, he said that Harshit’s back was broken. In the MRI, one can see it clearly. He is Mahina was in bed,’ says Pradeep.
India’s Harshit Rana failed to take the wicket of Australia’s Nathan McSweeney on the first day of the second cricket test match between Australia and India at the Adelaide Oval in Australia. (AP)
The injury attempt was repeated. A hamstring injury ruled him out of the entire 2023–24 Ranji Trophy season. It was a wake-up call to get as fit as possible. From November 2023 to the start of IPL 2024 in March, he lost 17 kg. The rest is pretty old.
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After the IPL final, Pradeep met KKR owner Shah Rukh Khan, who told him “Ladka jawan ho gaya hai Ranaji, ab Meri tarah giving flying kisses (Your boy is a man now, he’s giving flying kisses just like me). He was talking about Harshit’s signature wicket-taking celebration. A few days ago, Shahrukh had promised Harshit to celebrate together after winning the IPL trophy.
“When I got banned for one match, I was very upset and then Shah Rukh sir came to me and said, ‘Don’t take any unnecessary stress, we will celebrate the IPL with a flying kiss’. He promised me and ensured that we do so with the trophy and our team. ,” Harshit said.
KKR team owner Shah Rukh Khan and Harshit Rana. (screengrab)
Coach Gautam Gambhir immediately put this victory in perspective. “Gambir told him, ‘Look Harshit, you have done well, congratulations. Enjoy it, but let me tell you one thing, the joy you get from representing your country will be greater than this. The joy of representing 140 crore people is out of this world. So double your training’, says Pradeep.
He did, and in Perth he blew a few more flying kisses. The wicket that is still playing in Pradeep’s mind is Moti, who dismissed counterpunching Travis Head in the first innings. The ball pitched through middle and off-stump before shifting its shade to hit the top of the head’s off-stump. “Probably the best ball he’s bowled in his entire life,” says Pradeep with a smile.
The spell reminded the coach of Ishant’s bowling at the WACA. “It took me back to 2008, when Ishant bowled that extraordinary spell at the WACA (Perth’s old stadium). Ishant has played 105 Tests. I want Harshit to achieve that too,” says Kumar.
Meanwhile, the Ranas are busy preparing for their first foreign tour. “We will go to Melbourne on December 20. We wanted to go for the Adelaide Test but since there was no direct flight, Harshit asked us to come for the Melbourne Test,” he says.
There, on the biggest stage, the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, in front of his parents, Harshit puts his date with 150 kmph?
Fast lane
India’s long quest for out-and-out fast bowlers has been fulfilled to some extent in the last decade. Several pacers have burst through the ranks and broken the 150-kph mark.
A look at Club 150 in India