How a resilient Dube revived his international career

Shivam Dube's cricketing journey from obscurity to stardom, showcasing his power-hitting prowess and resurgence in international cricket.

“Woh shot dekha? Reminded you of Yuvi, didn’t it?”

Ravi Shastri, then India’s head coach, made this observation at Auckland’s Eden Park on 26 January 2020, seconds after Shivam Dube had clubbed Tim Southee over long-on for the six that sealed victory in the second of five Twenty20 Internationals.

It was the left-handed Mumbaikar’s 10th T20I; he had announced himself with an unbeaten 30-ball 54 just a month and a half previously, against West Indies in Thiruvananthapuram. Dube was 27 at the time, with a long future ahead of him in white-ball cricket owing to his propensity to hit the ball a long way and the rare tag of a potential all-rounder who could also bowl medium-pace.

Few knew at the time, not even the prescient Shastri, that following the end of that New Zealand series, Dube wouldn’t play international cricket for three and a half years. The early promise was studiously ignored, the comparisons with ‘Yuvi’, aka Yuvraj Singh, quickly forgotten. Dube threatened to figure in the list of the could-have-beens, lumbering from IPL franchise to franchise and not really setting the domestic stage alight, either.

Then, Chennai Super Kings happened. At the IPL mega auction in 2022, the multiple-times former champions dished out ₹4.40 crores for the man from Mumbai, who had moved from Royal Challengers Bangalore to Rajasthan Royals with limited success. The sceptics tut-tutted, amazed that CSK would invest so much in someone who had done so little. Hardly did they know that a turning of the corner was imminent.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Stephen Fleming assigned Dube a specific role – the takedown of spin in the middle overs. They gave him a stable position in the upper middle order, infused in him the confidence and belief that he could destroy the best with his power and timing. The backroom staff spent hours working on his mind, and even more hours getting his range-hitting prowess up and running.

The results were spectacular; Dube responded with 289 runs at an average of 28.90 and a strike-rate of 156.22. When he backed that up with 418 runs the following season at corresponding numbers of 38.00 and 158.33, it was impossible for the India selectors to keep looking beyond him.