Talking to him about fast bowling, red-ball cricket and IPL’s evolution is an eye-opener, purely in terms of how deeply he thinks about cricket and his own game to be able to constantly reinvent himself over the past 15 years.
“It’s about putting myself in situations where I can bowl a lot of overs in competition, make an impact for the team and win games. You can go and slog for two hours in the nets every day, but it’s nowhere near the intensity of competition.
“If I look back at all my successful seasons, whether in white-ball cricket or the IPL, they’ve always come on the back of a really good red-ball season. I know that if I grind through red-ball cricket and get my skills really tight and solid, that will translate into what is my bread and butter.”
It’s this belief that has powered his build-up to the new season. This understanding has come from years of experience, and a keen interest in strength and conditioning principles.
“The central question for me, as long as I keep playing cricket, is: can I do it again? That’s the only thing that pushes me to do whatever I have to do to compete,” he says. “When you’re playing red-ball cricket, you have to be diligent with your strength work, recovery and load management.
“A lot of people misunderstand load management. They think it means saving your body for the rigours of long-form cricket, but I look at it as giving your body enough stress and allowing it enough time to adapt, so that whatever you face during the season doesn’t come as a shock.
“The advantage of having done this over 16 seasons is that you know what your body needs, how much stimulus you can give it and how much time you need to recover. In the early stages of your career, you’re still shooting in the dark and relying on other people to tell you what you need. I’m in a really sweet spot now, where I understand what my body and my game require. After that, it’s about getting on the field and enjoying myself.”
So how has he built himself up this time?
“I understand the concepts of periodisation, what I need to do in general and specific preparation, and how to peak as I get closer to competition,” he says.
Periodisation is, he explains, “meticulous conditioning divided into specific progressive phases to maximise performance, based on my body’s recovery. Those are things I didn’t know when I was 20-22.
“Back then, strength and conditioning wasn’t as evolved as it is today in India, especially in domestic teams. We were all shooting in the dark. Whatever the calendar dictated, we did. But through those experiences, I’ve distilled how I need to approach preparation, when I need to peak and how I need to do it.”
In preparing for the Ranji Trophy, Harshal has had to rewire his own muscle memory. He understands slower balls and variations are not a viable stock option. Merely bowling with a red ball in hand trains you to do things differently.
“For the last two and a half months, I’ve been working on the skills I need to play the format and do well,” he says. “It’s about bowling that channel day in and day out, understanding what adjustments to make when you can’t, and knowing how to bowl defensively or aggressively.
“Aggressive bowling almost takes care of itself when the ball is doing something and there’s help from the surface. You don’t really need to do much; you just go out and bowl in the channel. I thoroughly enjoy the process of breaking things down and building them up again.
“Once we’re done with these four league-phase games, we’ll move straight into the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, which requires a very different skill set. I have slightly different loading patterns and mechanics for red-ball and white-ball cricket, so switching between the two effectively is something I enjoy. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don’t, but I like the process.”
From a technical standpoint, Harshal’s dissection begins with something as simple as his run-up.
“Red-ball bowling is more about efficiency than pure intensity,” he says. “I try to make my action as efficient as possible. My load-up is tighter, and I run in straighter, without too much of an angle, so that all the momentum I generate is aligned towards the batter. That makes it easier to sustain 20 overs in a day.
“You have to go with where the game is heading. You can’t keep doing what you’ve always done just because you’ve always done it. If that’s no longer where the value is, you need to go where the value is, where the action is and where the challenges are.”
Harshal Patel on deciding to focus more on his new-ball skills this season
“My white-ball action involves a lot of loading behind the head, which allows me to bowl yorkers, slower balls and other variations. If I tried to do that in red-ball cricket, I probably wouldn’t be able to sustain 20 overs because there’s so much muscular effort involved. There’s a lot of winding up and then releasing it, and you can only do that consistently for a certain period.”
Harshal equates red-ball bowling to being in a “meditative space.”
“I know the rhythm I’m running in and how I’m loading up. Once those things are taken care of, the ball will land where it has to. The little adjustments you need to make come through those two things.
“Everyone talks about timing in batting, but bowling is also about timing. You have to time when your back foot lands, when your front foot lands and how you transfer your weight between them. That determines how stable your position is at the crease and, ultimately, how much work you’re putting on the ball. If you can put enough into it and land 70% of your deliveries in the channel, you’ll create more than enough opportunities over the course of a day.”
The other facet of cricket Harshal is massively excited by as the new season begins is taking on the powerplay. For years now, he’s been straightjacketed as a death bowler, and for the right reasons. That specific art has helped him build an IPL career that could’ve been described as stop-start at best.
From 2012 to 2019, Harshal was a base-price pick at every season, bar one. It wasn’t until he was traded from Delhi Capitals to Royal Challengers Bengaluru ahead of IPL 2021 that his career gathered steam. Since then, he’s finished with the purple cap for most wickets twice (RCB in 2021 and Punjab Kings in 2023).
He also earned more money from one auction alone in 2022 – INR 10.75 crore – than he had in the decade prior to that. Quite naturally, the big bucks were for his death bowling. However, things have changed now.
“The reason I wanted to become a death bowler was that that’s where the action was. Right now, the action is in the powerplay,” he says. “You could choose to hide in a corner, or you could stand in the middle of the battle and say, ‘fire away.’
“It’s a risk, and one that every cricketer, or anyone with a competitive personality, has to take. You have to go with where the game is heading. You can’t keep doing what you’ve always done just because you’ve always done it. If that’s no longer where the value is, you need to go where the value is, where the action is and where the challenges are.”
Harshal believes red-ball conditioning and bowling with the new ball will also better condition him to bowl up front in the powerplays when the white-ball season comes along.
“When I broke through in the IPL, though, I was considered a death bowler,” he says. “Every captain I spoke to felt I was more valuable in the second half of the innings than the first. When you don’t execute a particular skill under pressure for a long period, that skill starts to fade. That’s what happened to me [with powerplay bowling], and it wasn’t surprising.
“I made a conscious decision based on where the game was heading over the last eight to ten years. Bowling at the death was probably the toughest job in T20 cricket then, but now that has shifted towards the powerplay. Death bowling is still challenging, but not as challenging as bowling in the powerplay.
“I want to challenge myself: can I add value by bowling up front as well as at the death? What skills and tactical planning do I need? It’s about understanding what I have to develop.”
Apart from working on his own skillsets, Harshal is also excited by the prospect of mentoring a young group of players at Gujarat. Jasprit Bumrah came through this very system, and Arzan Nagwaswalla briefly flickered on the national scene. For Harshal, playing domestic cricket is also about trying to back and help develop the next in line.
“I thoroughly enjoy it. I’ve always believed that unless you demonstrate through your actions what you can do, your words are pointless,” he says. “My first goal has always been not to preach or lecture, but to show.
“Rather than telling someone what they should do, I can demonstrate how to bowl in different conditions. That helps build trust, after which you can offer opinions and help with tactics or technique.
Much of that exchange begins with the basics. Younger bowlers are curious about how he prepares, manages his workload and stays fit through a long season. For Harshal, the answers have come from years of trial and error.
“Most of the questions I get from younger players are about preparation. They ask me how I avoid injuries, especially when they don’t see me doing a lot of warm-ups or mobility work. I’ve accumulated 15-16 years of trial and error and distilled those experiences into a method I can pass on to them.
“They’ve all been curious and open to what I’ve been willing to share. When you’re 20, 23 or 25, there’s an insecurity that comes with fighting for your place in the team. I still fight for my place because I never take it for granted, but I’m not insecure about it.”
This clarity, knowing he is in a secure space, matters a great deal to Harshal.
“If I tell someone something that works for them and helps them do well, it’s not a zero-sum game for me. It makes me happy that I’ve been able to help them.
“As you get into the latter half of your career, you start finding joy in different things and contributing in different ways. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity and the right environment to do that. Sometimes, when you start taking responsibility or teaching someone, coaches can feel a little insecure.
“Luckily, we don’t have any of that in this team.”
Shashank Kishore is a senior correspondent at Cricinfo