“Zaheer Khan’s mentoring has been the turning point of my career,” says young Jaydev Unadkat, who has been named as the member of the Indian team which will be touring Zimbabwe later this month. Zaheer worked on the bowling skills of this young left-hand bowler during the sixth edition of IPL which allowed him to understand his bowling much better. Apart from the immense contribution of Zak, he also gave credit to Chetashwar Pujara to whom he used to bowl in the nets while playing in IPL for Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Unadkat was quoted by Hindustan Times saying, "Zak (Zaheer) had a big role to play during the last season of IPL. I believe that his contribution to my improvement as a cricketer has been immense. He would devote extra time on me at the nets. Having variations is not all. Zak taught me how and when to use variations. He told me ways to read a batsman's mind which is very important.” He picked up 13 wickets in the 13 matches that he played for RCB this season.
He bowled against the likes of Chetashwar Pujara and Ravindra Jadeja while playing for Saurashtra which gave him that room for improvement and stressing more on that he was quoted by The Times of India saying, "You look at the amount of runs that Cheteshwar and Jadeja have scored in Ranji Trophy. Once you regularly bowl to a batsman of Cheteshwar's calibre at nets, it automatically improves you. Both Pujara and Jadeja have done well at the highest level and they would tell me about where I needed to improve. That helped a lot.”
Unadkat will be making his comeback after the gap of almost three years. He played for the Indian team against South Africa in 2010. "I didn't have a lot of experience then. In the last three seasons, I have matured as a cricketer having toiled hard at the Ranji Trophy as well as in the IPL," said Unadkat.
Unadkat was expecting a call for one of the teams but he is happy to be picked in both of them. "I thought that I would be picked up either in the India A squad to South Africa or for the Zimbabwe tour. I am proud of being a part of both squads," Unadkat said.
For Unadkat, the most important thing will be to cement a place in the side.
"There is a lot of competition for a place in the Indian side and one needs to give more than 200 hundred percent to get success at this level. I have worked a lot on my game as well as increasing my body strength," the youngster signed off