“Mere samajh main nahin aa raha itni jaldi yeh sab kaise ho gaya (I cannot believe how this could happen so quickly).” Moments after speaking to his son, Prince Yadav, on Tuesday afternoon, Ram Niwas Yadav was yet to process the phone call.
This IPL season, the father and son had established a routine for all match days — before boarding the team bus, Prince would call home. On Tuesday, the phone call brought a pleasant surprise. Prince told his father that he had been picked for the India ODI squad for the series against Afghanistan next month.
A retired ASI of the Railway Protection Special Force, Ram Niwas, who had doubted his son’s cricketing ambitions earlier, has been proved wrong.
When Prince was in his early 20s, while others his age were cracking government recruitment exams or getting into the police or armed forces, the youth from Dariyapur Khurd, a sleepy outpost in Southwest Delhi, was trying to figure out how to switch from street cricket to the real hard-ball version.
There were no godfathers to look up to, except the storied success of Virender Sehwag from Najafgarh, 15 kilometres away. Ram Niwas’s salary was not enough to support Prince’s obsession. And when his eldest daughter got a government teaching job, he experienced the sense of security that he had hoped for from his son.
Prince’s mother Santosh and cousins celebrate outside their home in Dariyapur Khurd after he was named in the India squad. (Photo by special arrangement)
“I didn’t know what to do with him after school,” Ram Niwas had told The Indian Express last month. “He had this junoon (obsession). But we were from Dariyapur Khurd. No academies. No one in the family had done it before. I couldn’t give him money to chase something that may never come. I told him to opt for the police, armed forces, something solid. He passed the Delhi Police physical test, but wouldn’t take the written exam,” recalled Ram Niwas.
He said his frustration would often spill over to his wife, Santosh, who supported Prince through the gruelling journey to reach a cricket club in Shastri Nagar, three hours away. “Tum Prince ko bigaad rahi ho (You are spoiling Prince),” Ram Niwas would tell his wife during every visit home.
The constant support from his younger cousins, Surender and Vikram, finally got Ram Niwas to ease the reins on Prince. Together, they set him free. To sprint for hours through the nearby wastelands with a tyre tied to his waist. To find his own way up through the wild circuit of Delhi cricket.
Prince Yadav’s family celebrates at his home in Dariyapur Khurd after he was named in the India squad. (Photo by special arrangement)
An unassuming coach from Najafgarh spotted the spark in him. Amit Vashisht, who had previously given three cricketers to Delhi and the IPL, took Prince under his wing and polished his transition to professional cricket. At 18, Prince was late to enter the age-group circuit. The inswingers and yorkers could raze the batters, but a platform was slipping away. He fudged his age by five years and fell in the BCCI net in 2019, landing a two-year ban.
“No cricket for two years. Luckily, it coincided with the Covid lockdown, and he would only focus on his fitness,” Vashisht said.
After the ban, Prince got picked for the Delhi Premier League in 2024. Representing the Purani Dilli-6 side led by Rishabh Pant, Prince’s 13 wickets, including a hat-trick, fetched him his maiden IPL contract with the Lucknow Super Giants.
At the IPL, it was that one spectacular delivery with which he got Virat Kohli that won him national fame. The dismissal has an interesting back story. It was on Kohli’s advice, during an earlier meeting in the league, that Prince had developed an inswinger. It was with that ball that he breached Kohli’s defence. “The entire village celebrated and said that by taking Kohli’s wicket, he would now come to the notice of the selectors. Aur woh bhi aise waise nahin, bowled karke liya hai, farak padta hai (Not just any wicket, he bowled him out, that makes a difference),” said Ram Niwas.
