Fairy tales used to be very much interesting for us in our childhood days. Growing up from poor grounds ending up to becoming greats were thought to happen just in those stories.
But only a few people have the ability of making their lives a never thought fairytale by their hard work, enthusiasm and some luck as well. This man proved to be a protagonist of such a fairytale of his own life.
He is none other than Umesh Kumar Tilak Yadav. He was born on 25th October 1987 in Nagpur into a poor family. Being son of a coal miner he had a family to feed by himself. After being failed a number of times in joining the police service and the army he made into cricket which changed fortune of his family.
In the year 2007-08 he started to play with the leather ball having previously played with just tennis ball. Umesh Yadav joined the Vidarbha team in the same year for the Ranji-Trophy. He was highly supported by Pritam Gandhe who was always behind him and made sure that he was able to represent Air India in the T20 Tournament.
On November 3 2008, Umesh made his First Debut for Vidarbha against Madhya Pradesh in the 2008-09 season of the National Tournament. In the first innings which he bowled he got the figures of 4/72 as he did not bowl in the 2nd innings and his team lost the match by 10 wickets.
Umesh Yadav was picked for the ICC Champions Trophy 2013 and played an integral role in securing India’s victory. Umesh Yadav slowly became the leader of the pack until he was dropped from the squad for the India vs. Australia ODI series 2013. Umesh Yadav returned to the ODI squad for the tour of South Africa but after poor displays, he was dropped after the series but picked in the test squad.
Umesh Yadav got his international breakthrough in May 2010 as he got his maiden call up for the Indian Team in place of injured Praveen Kumar for the World T20 which he didn’t get to bowl. In the same month he was selected for the tri-nation series against the hosts Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. He got his debut in the same series as the management sent an under strength team with more than half of the First choice players either rested or injured.
After a poor show in the debut series with just one wicket in 3 matches he was left out of the team for over a year. He the was included in the team as practice bowler where he accumulated experience of bowling to test batsmen.
All it happened in the year 2011 when the West Indies tour to India and the management decided to shuffle the fast bowling attack of the team. So they put Praveen Kumar and Shreesanth out and included Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron in the team based on their previous performances against England in the previous year.
Since then he has never taken a look back and has been performing for the team and creating breakthroughs whenever the teams needs it. We hope to see him in flying colors and at times clicking the 90mph mark with the red as well as the white balls.