How a lanky offspin-bowling allrounder overcame early setbacks and became Mumbai’s man for every situation
Vishal Dikshit08-Nov-2024Mumbai were training in Raipur for their penultimate league game of the 2023-24 Ranji Trophy season when captain Ajinkya Rahane walked up to the offspin-bowling allrounder Tanush Kotian. Rahane told the spindly youngster that he had bundles of batting potential, and it was time he added a three-figure score to his streak of four half-centuries that season.A couple of weeks later, Kotian obliged his captain, and it was no ordinary hundred. His maiden first-class century, which he brought up off 115 balls at No. 10, came in a record 232-run stand with Tushar Deshpande, the second-highest for the 10th wicket in Ranji Trophy history. At a time when a wicket would have left Baroda with a stiff but realistic fourth-innings target in their bid for a quarter-final win, the last-wicket pair shut them out in style, with Kotian driving and pulling with authority and hitting four sixes down the ground.”I told him, ‘you have the ability, if you can score a hundred at No. 8 or 9, that’ll be the game-changer,'” Rahane tells ESPNcricinfo of that conversation with Kotian in Raipur. “I could see that in his game. Sometimes you need some guidance when you’re scoring 70-80 and you have only one or two batters to accompany you. So you have to take your chances. I told him to identify which bowlers to target, when to keep the strike, and so on. I always felt he had the game to become a good allrounder where he can win matches single-handedly.”If Baroda couldn’t dismiss Kotian in that knock of 120, neither could Tamil Nadu in the semi-finals, when he scored 89 not out to turn a tricky position into a dominant innings win. When he couldn’t contribute with the bat in the final against Vidarbha, he bagged seven wickets to script an imposing win at the Wankhede Stadium. Mumbai lifted the Ranji Trophy for the 42nd time, and Kotian the glittering Player-of-the-Tournament award with 502 runs at an average of 41.83 and 29 wickets at 16.96. Kotian was the only player from any side to complete the season’s double of 500 runs and 25 wickets.ESPNcricinfo LtdHe was duly fast-tracked into the India A side for the Duleep Trophy six months later, before he impressed in the Mumbai whites once again in the Irani Cup last month, first with a patient 64 and then – as if his captain’s words had rung again in his ears – with a knock of 114, to rescue his side from a precarious 125 for 6. His second century was also brisk, coming off 135 balls, against an attack as good as any in domestic cricket, featuring Mukesh Kumar, Prasidh Krishna and Yash Dayal, a testament to his temperament under pressure. It was a result of the realisation Kotian had had early in his career – he has still only played 32 first-class games – that performing in India’s premier red-ball competition was about making a few things happen together.”There’s a big difference in performing at this level and age-group cricket, and I knew that handling pressure would be key because oppositions have top bowlers and you don’t get that many opportunities,” a padded-up Kotian tells ESPNcricinfo, dripping sweat in the Mumbai dugout after a nets session. This is before he leaves for the tour of Australia with India A, who are currently playing their second four-day game at the MCG. “You also don’t get loose balls that often so you must convert whatever chances you get.”I don’t think of situations in such a way that, ‘oh, this is a tough situation.’ I back my natural game, my confidence, and my shots. I don’t want to defend unnecessarily just because it’s a pressure situation. Instead, I try to dominate the bowler in those situations so that they go on the back foot. I also try to build the innings in chunks of five-five runs, and not think about the next 50 or 100 runs.”Now 26 and in his fifth Ranji season, Kotian recalled how he was dropped after playing just two games in his maiden campaign six years ago, forcing him to go back to the Under-23s to prove himself again. Being pushed one level below hit him hard, and made him think hard about what he needed to do to return to the senior Mumbai side, which he did in 2022.”I backed myself completely: my shots, my bowling strengths,” he says. “I kept thinking about how I can improve and make the captain believe in me that whenever required, I’m there to contribute with both bat and ball for the team. I wanted to make the most of the opportunities. I built my game around that, I worked with the coaches every day in training sessions about coming up with different plans, like what line to bowl with just two fielders on the off side. I worked a lot on my bowling over two years. This also gave me a lot of confidence which I didn’t have earlier because I had not performed.”This relentless work ethic translated into match-winning performances. His wickets tally rose from 18 in the 2021-22 season to 20 in the next, and 29 in the victorious 2023-24 campaign, and at the same time his runs count swelled from 262 to 303 and then 502.”I think he has been a very good team man,” Rahane says of Kotian. “That’s the best quality I would say about him because he’s always willing to put his hand up and say, ‘I’ll do it for the team,’ when the team needs it. Whenever we’ve told him in the last two-three seasons that this is his role, he’s always willing to do that. He’s been very hard-working and he’s very confident about his abilities, both bowling and batting.”Kotian took 29 wickets at 16.96 during Mumbai’s victorious 2023-24 Ranji campaign•PTI A lanky offspinner, Kotian is routinely likened to R Ashwin in the Mumbai fraternity, mostly because of the body of work he is building. Kotian suggests that his biggest strength with the ball is the pace – in the range of 85 to 90kph – at which he gets turn and extra bounce. This could have something to do with the fact that he often used to bowl pace in his school days. The son of a semi-professional cricketer who now runs a coaching academy close to their house, Kotian grew up playing in the gullies of Vikhroli, where he picked up the Hinglish patois of Mumbai’s bustling streets.” tennis ball games street smartness quick games every time Saturday-Sunday match dad ,” he says. “School games locality friends game .” In short, he suggests that the early diet of constant tennis-ball cricket with his friends along with the more formal environment of school matches shaped him into a quick learner with street smarts.And in those early days, he opened the batting and bowled both pace and spin. It was when he switched from St. Joseph’s School to VN Sule School, when he was just about to hit his teens, that he had a growth spurt and began focusing on his offspin in the highly competitive environment of the Harris and Giles Shields.”Offspin , wickets offspin build Mumbai Under-14, Under-16 19 .”The India Under-19 debut came in 2017, in the Asia Cup in Malaysia, where he played alongside the likes of Abhishek Sharma, Arshdeep Singh and Riyan Parag, and 2018 brought him his Ranji Trophy debut at the age of 20. A week after lifting the 2023-24 Ranji Trophy for Mumbai, Kotian bagged his maiden IPL contract with Rajasthan Royals, as a replacement for Adam Zampa.Kotian didn’t get to bowl in IPL 2024 but found an excellent learning environment in the RR camp, where he could learn the art of deception from the likes of Yuzvendra Chahal and Keshav Maharaj, and, of course, Ashwin.3:38
Duleep Trophy: Easwaran, Arshdeep and Kotian impress
Kotian was already excited about speaking to Ashwin, but also felt “on the back foot about meeting the legend.” When they finally met, it wasn’t the IPL that Kotian picked Ashwin’s brains about but red-ball cricket.”The way he plays mind games and plans for different batsmen in red-ball cricket is completely different,” Kotian says of his RR senior. “I tried to learn that from him, how to read the batsmen in red-ball and plan their wickets.”He gave me valuable advice on field placements and how to hold the seam position differently to get different results. I normally grip the ball fairly tight; he asked me to keep it a little loose, change the grip slightly and then release it.”Even when I was batting against him in the nets I could see how the ball was coming at a different pace and the revs he was putting on the ball. I learnt that if you have to play at the top level, you have to give revs on every ball.”There is, however, only so much you can pick up from others compared to learning from your own experiences and even mistakes. Rahane suggests that if Kotian has to progress to the next level as a bowler, he will have to learn how to pick up wickets even when conditions do not favour spin.”It’s important he learns from the experiences he gains by playing there [against Australia A],” Rahane says. “As he plays more and more, he will know himself things like how’s the bounce and what line and length to bowl accordingly.”You can’t be bowling the same kind of deliveries, one has to improve. As a bowler you need to use angles, to lefties or righties. If the wicket is not offering anything then what do you do, how to use the rough, if it’s there, how to create pressure when conditions are not in your favour. He has all the qualities, but these are the things he needs to be aware of, how to adapt in different situations and conditions. His game is good enough to take him forward, he doesn’t need to change anything.”Once back from Australia, Kotian will get back into the grind of domestic cricket, well in time for the mega IPL auction on November 24 and 25. While an international debut may have to wait, Kotian will hope his promising showings will help fetch him a memorable IPL deal.