Arshdeep Singh and how to stand out in the right ways

Arshdeep Singh has always stood out. And that's not always a good thing.

Jasprit Bumrah, India's Player of the Tournament at the 2024 men's T20 World Cup, was born in a Sikh family in Ahmedabad. Shubman Gill, the national heir-apparent who'll lead India in the forthcoming tour of Zimbabwe, is a Sikh boy too.

But neither of them has been called a separatist for dropping a catch, bowling a wicketless spell, or getting out in single digits against Pakistan. The separatist movement is hardly apologetic to Pakistan. But that doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter that Arshdeep's father, Darshan Singh, has served the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) for a quarter of a century. The only thing that matters is that Arshdeep wears a turban. And he looks different than others.

For a long time, Indian Sikhs, including cricketers like Harbhajan Singh, complained of racism in Europe, Australia, and the Americas. But now, since the 2020-21 Farmers' Protest (which was eventually recognized by the Union Government), for cricketers like Arshdeep, racist abuse from his own is part of life.

And, unfortunately, the only way to stop standing out is to stand out for the right reasons. People conveniently ignore that these side-eyes and taunts pull your starting point a lot behind your teammates. But you need to finish at least equal to, if not better than them, to prove your worth. And you need to keep doing it.

In the 2024 men's T20 World Cup, Arshdeep took major strides towards that. Although his laurels didn't make newspaper headlines and his photos didn't become anybody's wallpaper after India won the final, he did stand out.

Arshdeep's rise and rise in the USA and the West Indies

Arshdeep took 17 wickets in eight innings in the tournament. That wasn't just joint-highest in this edition but also the best in any men's T20 World Cup.

This was his second T20 World Cup. In his first, in 2022, he was also India's top-wicket taker. He thus became the third bowler to top India's wicket-taking charts in two T20 World Cups and the first to do it in back-to-back editions.

Nine of Arshdeep's 17 scalps came in death overs -- again, the joint-highest. He was the only bowler at this World Cup to be in the top five of the wicket-taking charts in both powerplay (fifth best) and death overs.

He finished his quota of four overs seven times in eight innings and picked up at least one wicket in each of them -- a feat replicated not even by Bumrah.

In death overs, he was so good at getting his yorkers under the batters' willows that experts from Pakistan started accusing him of ball-tampering. He wasn't tampering with anything, he was in just that good a rhythm with his action to be able to extract the maximum of the pitches in the USA and the West Indies.

There were two major changes visible in his execution. Firstly, his economy rate in death overs was a brilliant 7.75 -- a significant improvement from 12.20 in IPL 2024. His dot-ball percentage in this phase went up to 47.91 percent from 37.20 percent.

Some of it can be attributed to the quality of the opposition batters and the lack of the Impact Player rule. But, in most games, he found the right mix of yorkers and variations, instead of trying to continuously land the former like in the IPL.

Secondly and more importantly, he emerged as the new big-moments-wicket-taker. In IPL 2024, he had an economy rate of over 10, which came down to 6.83 in the World Cup. Against Pakistan, he held his own perfectly in this phase, which eventually resulted in Imad Wasim's wicket a few overs later.

In the final, Rohit trusted him to bowl the 13th over and he responded by breaking the crucial 46-run partnership between Quinton de Kock and Heinrich Klaasen. His new ball skills and courage with the old were well-known but his development in the middle overs was endearing to witness.

After IPL 2024, where the third pacer, Mohammed Siraj also struggled, it felt like India didn't have a second speedster to back Bumrah up in any phase of the innings. Arshdeep did so in all three while also making Rohit believe that Bumrah's four overs weren't the only ones he could rely on to break frustrating partnerships.

If India didn't have the sheer genius of Bumrah running the show, maybe Arshdeep would have garnered more respect for his journey from the throws of hard work in Haryana and Punjab, impressing Mike Hesson in a training camp and then leading the Punjab Kings bowling attack right from his debut in 2020, to make it to India.

Now, the scars from that dropped catch are still there and are repeatedly felt in Punjab.

“When he was given the 19th over [against South Africa in the final], I was tensed," Jaswant RaiI, Arshdeep's coach, told Indian Express from Chandigarh recently. "If he would have ended up conceding a couple of boundaries, he would have been blamed for the loss. The abuse he received after the 2022 Asia Cup is still fresh in my memory. I didn’t watch a single ball of the 19th over. I kept my eyes closed [from] the moment he was in his running stride."

Perhaps Arshdeep doesn't feel this pressure. He never lets it to show, anyway.

His Instagram stories and interviews with the BCCI are funnier than those of a stand-up comedian. His one-liners are sometimes dry enough to make your eyes weep. He doesn't give too many interviews but is always courteous in his responses, which is not as common in the fraternity as you'd think.

Or perhaps he knows that it's futile to take empathy for granted and that it's only his hard work that can help him stand out in the right ways in the wrong minds.