Birthday special: Bharat Arun – The man behind India’s formidable pace battery
The Indian cricket team finally boasts of a formidable bowling attack that can give nightmares to the opposition batters both at home and overseas. The mastermind behind this remarkable transformation of India’s bowling unit is the former right-arm seamer and India’s current bowling coach Bharat Arun. Born on 14th December 1962, Arun joined the Indian set-up in England in August 2014 and from there started the golden era of Indian bowling.
Playing career
Though Bharat is gaining limelight as the bowling mentor of the Indian side, he couldn’t make it big in international cricket. His journey in the world of cricket started at the age of 20 as he made his first-class debut for Tamil Nadu. A medium pacer who can bat a bit lower down the order, Arun showed promise and character to the selectors and was added to the Indian squad for a tour against Sri Lanka in 1986.
He got his maiden Test call on December 17, 1986 in Kanpur against Sri Lanka and soon made his ODI debut too on December 24, 1986, against the same opposition. However, in the very limited opportunities that he got, Arun failed to make an impact and his outing for the Men in Blue ended after playing just 6 games. He continued playing cricket for Tamil Nadu in the domestic circuit but finally decided to quit the game in 1992.
The second innings
In 2002, Bharat Arun started the second innings of his career as he joined Tamil Nadu’s Ranji side as the bowling coach. This was followed by him essaying the role of the chief bowling coach at National Cricket Academy (NCA) before training the Indian U-19 squad. Under his mentorship, India lifted the ICC U-19 2012 World Cup.
Arun got the major breakthrough in his career when he was taken on-board as the bowling coach of the National team in 2014 upon the recommendation of Ravi Shastri, who was the team director. His stint with the Indian contingent ended in July 2016 but he was brought back in the set-up in July 2017 with Shastri as the head coach.
Life has it’s own ways of making comebacks!
A burly Medium Pacer from TN whose India career never quite got going in the mid 80s, now boasts of Building up & Coaching a World Class Test bowling attack & probably the best that India ever had.
Happy Birthday Bharat Arun pic.twitter.com/SKeeyhPgId
— North Stand Gang – Wankhede (@NorthStandGang) December 14, 2019
India were never known for producing lethal seamers who could compel the cricketing world to sit up and take notice. However, this has changed over the past few years as with the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav and Ishant Sharma, India have the most fearsome fast-bowling unit in the world. In addition, there are youngsters like Navdeep Saini, T Natarajan, Deepak Chahar and Mohammed Siraj who look promising and can shine for the Men in Blue in coming years.
Credit for this goes to Bharat Arun also as he finally seems to have cracked the code to prepare a strong, imposing pace attack, something that coaches before him or bowlers before the current generation could not.
