He has spent more time in gyms, anti-gravity chambers, scan rooms and pools than on the cricket ground. So the excitement at his first sight of the Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium amid Srinagar’s crisp autumn air, the trees and the hills was palpable on Tuesday.
He understands better than most that good medical care can’t be taken for granted; he lost his father and brother due to lack of timely medical intervention. So while the seven months away from the game could easily have felt like a dark period, he does not remember it that way.
“I take everything positively,” Akash tells Cricinfo. “If I have got injured today, I have the Centre of Excellence (CoE), a trainer, physio, coach, four-five support staff. There are so many things set up for you to succeed. These are blessings.
“I’ve seen back in the village [he hails from Sasaram in Bihar] there’s been nobody when you’ve needed them. No one to even tell you what to do. So I didn’t see this phase as needing mental toughness. There was nothing to be depressed about.
“I realised I have to use this time well to prolong my cricket career. I went into every little detail as an athlete… nutrition, training, recovery.
“It feels good to be back.”
Akash first felt something was off in February this year.
He was in the middle of Bengal’s Ranji Trophy knockouts, hoping to help them bring home a title that has eluded them since 1989-90. So he initially brushed aside the early signals as fatigue.
“During the game, I was sweating a lot, but when my body cooled down, the fever would return. I played the entire game through this”
Akash Deep on playing the 2025-26 Ranji Trophy quarter-final
“In the build-up to the Ranji Trophy quarter-final, I was down with fever. I was also having migraine and a sore throat. The body pain before the match was so severe that I thought there was no way I could even walk. But because it was such an important match, I pushed myself. I had a 102-degree fever, but I took paracetamol and played.
“During the game, I was sweating a lot, but when my body cooled down, the fever would return. I played the entire game through this.”
“At that stage I felt this was the best chance for Bengal to win the Ranji Trophy. You have that bhook [hunger] inside you, because we had been making it to the semi-finals and finals again and again, but we were not winning. So you feel you could win this one.”
“I was feeling fine in the first innings. But in the second innings, I started feeling pain in my hamstring and glute,” he says. “It was a tightness-kind of pain, and a pinching sensation in the nerve along my glute that goes all the way down to my left leg.”
Bengal were defending only 126, and Akash went flat out to pick up two quick wickets in the six overs he bowled on the penultimate evening. The next morning, he continued and bowled nine overs unchanged. Bengal’s campaign came to a grinding halt, and the disappointment of the loss combined with extreme physical discomfort left him drained.
“I felt neural irritation because it was a different type of pain. You know, there is a pinch somewhere.”
Scans at the CoE confirmed he had an L5 stress fracture.
Akash’s initial reaction was shock. Eventually, it gave way to acceptance and he counted himself lucky that he didn’t need surgery. That, however, didn’t mean the road to his recovery was easy.
“When I came to know about it, I was on rest for a month. I mean, I was completely relaxed at home. After that month, my normal activities started,” he says. “I was [initially] doing core work and upper-body exercises with light weights. You are doing everything except putting strain on your back. Slowly, slowly, the weight started increasing.
“Then after that, the anti-gravity treadmill [the lower body is sealed in an air-tight chamber that allows people to walk or run with reduced impact on healing joints, bones, and surgery]. Only after that, I went outdoors.”
“I take everything positively. If I have got injured today, I have the Centre of Excellence, a trainer, physio, coach, four-five support staff. There are so many things set up for you to succeed. These are blessings”
It wasn’t until June that he began loading up to bowl. A premature return could increase the risk of recurrence, so there was little incentive to hurry.
In early July, he began with two to four steps at 40% intensity, bowling three overs. The next session, it was four overs, then six. By mid-July, he had progressed to 60% intensity, followed by 80% in August.
Then came the final stages: 90% intensity, with three sessions of six, eight and ten overs, before he progressed to back-to-back days of 12 overs at full tilt.
The return-to-play certificate was imminent.
Akash used the time in rehab to spend time with and pick the brains of those who had endured something similar. Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya were often by his side, as was Mayank Yadav.
“Jasprit and Hardik had been through surgery, so I was asking them about what happened after the surgery and how they felt [about dealing with it],” he says. “You wake up and you just have to work hard. You don’t have to think about which exercise you have to do when you go to the gym, which rehab you have to do when you go to the physio, how many balls you have to bowl when you go to the coach. You don’t have to think. It’s all managed.”
In the middle of such an extended rehab, Akash was also aware of his skills needing some tweaking. Because, he insists, with such injuries, the fear of recurrence – no matter how strong one is mentally – can be high.
“When you’ve been playing cricket for 10, 12,15 years, technically it is very difficult for you to change yourself. But there are some things that you can absorb because you cannot do that in a match,” he says. “In a match, your mind is on performance.
“So I was seeing when I come into the second spell, how is my body reacting? When I come into the third spell, how is it reacting? Or how can I save myself for the third spell and push a little more? I was working on all those things.”
For months, everything had been controlled: his intensity, the number of overs, the number of days between sessions. Now Akash is back to bowling at full tilt, testing his body by bowling the way he knows best: flat out, fast and tirelessly. Except now he has much more understanding of his body’s limits.
“My strength is to bowl for a long time and to bowl in certain areas. I will focus on that and get used to it,” he says. “See, no matter how much you practise, seven or eight months, no matter how much you do, a match is a match.
“The [Irani Cup] match is very important. So I want to get used to playing matches again, because physically you can sustain yourself, but you also have to sustain yourself mentally for six and a half hours a day, for five days. So it’s about getting used to the match.
“I want to get used to all these things and, whenever I get a chance, keep myself ready to deliver. If the team needs it, I’ll bowl 20 overs a day. That’s how I’ve played my cricket, so I still won’t be able to do it any other way.”
Shashank Kishore is a senior correspondent at Cricinfo