Will Young was shocked when he was adjudged the Player of the Series. He turned his head this way and that before shyly collecting the award and waving it to his teammates. Self-effacing in the classical Kiwi mould, he tried to be as measured as possible in his tone and words. A question towards the end of the ceremony mildly irritated him. It was about where he would bat when Kane Williamson returned. “Don’t know about that. Next series, we’ll see what happens.”
It’s the tag that has haunted Young for most of his career. He is New Zealand’s Mr Cover. The back-up guy, ferrying drinks and performing the substitute fielder’s chores. But it’s invariable that his moment under the sun arrived when replacing the injured Williamson. He illustrated his value with a pair of resilient half-centuries and an unbeaten 48 under pressure in the second innings in Bengaluru. Young was the most assured player of spin from both teams, sticking steadfastly to the principles of playing the ball as late as possible, not falling into the black hole of presupposing the stroke he wanted to play, using his long reach to smother the spin, and employing his long levers to find the boundaries. Whereas it was a struggle for most batsmen, he made batting look easy.
The fundamental to Young’s batting is sturdy defence. “I needed to trust my defence and at times, needed to be clear on where I wanted to score and do it for as long as I possibly could. If I know where I want to score and can trust my defence, that makes the mind a lot clearer,” he told the host broadcasters during the ceremony.
No one from either side soaked as many deliveries as him either. Then he knows the value of patience. In 2019, Young was all set to make his Test debut against Bangladesh. Stand-in skipper Tim Southee was taking him to the press conference when news of the Christchurch mosque bombings filtered in. “By the time Tim and I got back to the hotel, the Bangladesh team was just pulling out to go to the mosque and the mosque shooting happened,” he recollected in a podcast with stuff.co.nz.
From visualising his Test debut, he was flipping through messages from friends and family about a gunman on the loose. “We were all hunkered down in one of the boys’ hotel rooms watching the news as I’m sure everyone else in New Zealand was, watching scenes unfold. It was just devastating for everyone involved. At the time, I didn’t even think about cricket. It was just without question that the game was going to be called off,” he recounts.
When the series was abandoned, the reality sunk in that he had missed an opportunity. It was to be the last match of the season. But agony turned to joy when Young was picked in the ODI squad for the tour to Australia. A few good scores could be rewarded with a spot in the World Cup squad. He returned to training and in a freak accident, injured the labrum in his left shoulder. But he shrugged off the pain and scored a couple of hundreds in the series. But he had aggravated his injury so badly that he had to undergo surgery.
Bouncing back
Times were difficult, and Young thought he would never play Test cricket. But he had a shoulder to lean on. His childhood coach Debu Banik, a former cricketer in the Kolkata league. “He was gutted but I cheered him up, made him interact with the kids at my club (Taranaki cricket academy), recollected old tales, and took a few of his old mates to spend time with him. We talked about cricket and life and stumbled on the idea to help cricketers with financial hurdles,” Banik tells this paper.
Young set up The Will Young Cricket Trust, which provides funds and kits for aspiring cricketers in the locality. Taranaki is an idyllic locale, shelled between the Taranaki Mountain and the Tasman Sea in the North Island. “Ours is a small, touristy district with basic facilities for a cricketer. The sport is more recreational. The people here are simple folks,” he says. They also chartered out his rehab, and a year later, Young regained optimal fitness and form.
When Banik started the academy, there were hardly any children who took the game seriously. But then Young came along. “I had just brought a bowling machine and invited him to face a few balls. He must have been around 12 at that time, and I thought I would start at 75 mph. He would easily defend those and would ask me to increase the pace. It went up to 80, 85. He was facing the balls without any problems,” he recollects.
By the time Young was 15, he had broken most batting records in the locality. He was such a cricket tragic that he would accumulate the pocket money his parents had given him and ask the boys in his neighbourhood to bowl at him. “If they got me out, I’d buy them a $2 lolly mixture,” he would say.
Even after the practice sessions, he would linger on and ask Banik for more throw-downs. “I used to wake up with severe shoulder pain, but was happy as long as he was scoring runs and making quick progress,” the coach says.
His day finally arrived. He made his debut against the West Indies in Hamilton in December 2020. His real coming of age, though, came four years later under the scorching Wankhede sun. The Test he shed his reserve batsman tag.