When Lucknow Super Giants: When Lucknow Super Giants needed 54 runs off 24 balls against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens, most of them had written off their chances of winning the match. But in a restaurant in Udaipur, Rajasthan’s batting coach Nikhil Doru hadn’t given up.
Having dinner with his friends, who don’t belong to the cricketing ecosystem, they quipped the match was out of LSG’s reach. But Doru was watching it differently and told them a certain Mukul Choudhary would win the game for LSG.
“I told them, ‘Mukul match jita dega (Mukul will win the match from here)’. Their reply was, ‘The situation is such that they cannot win from here. How can they win?’ I told them, ‘I have seen him play before and he will definitely win the match from here’. Right after saying this, he began to hit boundaries consistently,” recalled Doru in an exclusive conversation with IANS, ahead of LSG facing Gujarat Titans.
After making just one run from his first five deliveries, Choudhary accelerated into a flurry of boundaries, punctuated by a helicopter shot that mirrored the trademark stroke of MS Dhoni. With eight runs needed from three balls, Doru told his friends a six would come now. Right on the money, Choudhary carved a wide yorker from Vaibhav Arora over extra cover for six.
When LSG won and Choudhary thanked the Almighty with folded hands after being unbeaten on 54 off 27 balls, Doru was an elated man and spoke to him on Friday morning, where the topic of discussion was not taking any risks and fear of being unable to get going replaced by him showcasing his shots in the last two-three overs.
To understand why Doru was so supremely unruffled, one needs to rewind to the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy last year, where Rajasthan’s game against Delhi in Ahmedabad played out in almost the same way. The Rajasthan dugout had lost all hopes of winning the match but Choudhary hit a whirlwind 62 not out off just 26 balls, laced with seven sixes, and turned a certain loss into a stunning victory.
“Mukul had that innate belief of winning the match for us if he played till the end. In the last over, we needed 25 runs and he hit four sixes off Ayush Badoni. Then the equation came down to six runs off the last ball and he sent the ball over the ropes for six,” recalled Doru.
After that game, Doru sat down with Choudhary, who became a lower-order hitter after being an opener in U14 and U16 levels, and asked him the what was going through his mind when the situation looked so tough to snatch a win from the jaws of defeat, and when he himself wasn't scoring freely?
The answer has stayed with Doru since then, as Choudhary would repeat it almost verbatim to broadcasters after pulling off a heist against KKR. "If I play till the last ball, I will win the match for the team. My aim was to play till the end because if that happened, I would win the game."
Those words, Doru believes, is the key to decoding Choudhary the cricketer. When the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy began, Choudhary wasn't in Rajasthan's playing eleven. When Kartik Sharma injured his finger, the coaching staff - who had been demanding for Choudhary's inclusion from the selectors before the tournament began - finally got their man.
After Choudhary felt a train from Sikar to reach Ahmedabad would lead him to miss the game, he tried taking a flight. But due to IndiGo having operational issues and other airlines not having seats, that option was ruled out. Choudhary reached Ahmedabad at 4am via a car drive with his friend and slept for some time before walking in for his first game against Delhi and became an instant hero.
Following that match-winning performance, Doru dispatched Choudhary’s statistics and video footage to Vikram Solanki, Director of Cricket at Gujarat Titans, and V Cheluvaraj, a scout for Chennai Super Kings. At last year’s auction in Abu Dhabi, LSG secured Choudhary’s services for Rs 2.6 crore, outbidding interests from Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals.
Hailing from Khedaro Ki Dhani village in Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district, Choudhary’s rise was 12 years in the making. His father Dalip had decided even before getting married that his firstborn would be a cricketer. When Choudhary arrived in 2004, Dalip got into the quest of making him a cricketer.
He quit his teaching job, gave up on his Rajasthan Administrative Services (RAS) ambitions and sold his home, while pivoting into the volatile real estate and hospitality sectors, with debts mounting to Rs three crores. His mother, Sunita, swapped sleep for 4am meal prep, and monitored Mukul’s progress from her classroom window before leaving her job.
Mukul was then enrolled at the SBS Cricket Academy at Sikar, a place 80 kms away from Jhunjhunu, and attended coaching clinics organised by Yograj Singh and Dinesh Lad before finding a permanent training base in Jaipur’s Aravalli Coaching Centre, where coaches Vikas Yadav and Vijay Golada moved him to the batting group after earmarking him as a pacer.
Choudhary’s family, including his younger sister being a Civil Services aspirant, currently live in a rented house in Jaipur. Long before Choudhary’s breakout time, Doru recalled a pivotal moment during the Rajasthan probables camp for the 2025/26 season serving as an indicator of his temperament.
Rajasthan's selection panel named only two specialist openers in the 25-member camp - considerably insufficient for a full Ranji Trophy campaign. To address the shortfall, Doru asked established middle-order batters if they would open the batting.
Opening in first-class cricket is filled with its own risks, as facing a new ball that seams and swings can derail the career of a settled middle-order player. Despite having debuted in 2023 and still finding his feet in senior-level cricket, Choudhary was the only player to immediately accept the challenge.
"Everyone said no, but he said, 'Yes, I am ready to do whatever you ask me to do. If you want to prepare me as an opener, I am ready to be one.’ I requested him only once, and he was ready to open the batting. Now think how much mentally strong he is when he said ‘Nahi sir, mei karunga. Aap mujhe taiyaar kariye (No sir, I will do it. You prepare me for it).
“For a middle order batter to open the batting is one of the toughest tasks in red-ball cricket. But still he accepted that challenge and was ready to do it as per the demand of the team. I could make out that his attitude is really very good and is ready to take up any challenge or tough situation,” said Doru.
Doru started working with Choudhary immediately - two full months of intensive preparation covering not just power-hitting for white-ball cricket, but the technical demands of the opening role in red-ball cricket: handling the new ball, seam and swing, and adjusting to different field settings.
Doru was required to present a case study at the BCCI Centre of Excellence on any batter he worked on for two months and Choudhary became his subject. “Through the initial assessment and video analysis, I realised that his power-hitting game and pick-up ability to hit sixes is very good.
“I didn’t stop that part of his game and developed more of his hitting game for T20s – facing fast bowlers, handling new ball and adapting his game as per in and out field settings. I do feel due to the work done by me on him for those two months, his confidence increased and shot selection had major improvements,” he said.
Choudhary scored 44 as an opener against Chhattisgarh, before becoming the top run-getter in the Under-23 List A trophy – amassing 617 runs at an average of nearly 103 and a strike rate of over 142, laced with 39 sixes and 34 fours.
After Rajasthan lost to Jammu and Kashmir during the Ranji Trophy game in two days in Srinagar, an optional training session was arranged the following morning. Of 15 squad members, only two turned up: Choudhary and Sumit Goddar.
Doru also offers an insightful technical explanation of why Choudhary hits the ball the way he does via his supple wrists, and a wonderful bat speed. “Technically, he is in more of a sideways position and his shoulders are closed. When there is an incoming ball, his shoulders do not open - so he has to play that helicopter shot because he needs to open his body to play in the leg side.
“But his body is closed and doesn’t open up and then he has to play with the wrists or the helicopter shot, which is his natural shot. In the coming times, the teams will plan to target him with balls on the feet, pads and hips because he keeps his body closed.
“But then the advantage of keeping his body closed is because his shoulders are also closed, he gets the full arc with the bat to hit the shots and use the helicopter shot and the wrists to hit sixes. He understands his strengths well to hit the helicopter shot and has a lot of power in his wrists.
“Apart from that helicopter shot, he hit a slower bouncer on the off-stump for six. Normally, people hit that over the slip via an uppercut, but he hit it over cover. Again he hit a six over extra cover on the wide yorker and that shows he read the situation well. He knows what the bowler is going to bowl according to the field. According to that, he prepares himself and that’s his speciality,” elaborated Doru.
Doru recalled that for the last 18 months, Choudhary has practiced hitting 100-200 sixes daily, especially after noting the reality of modern T20 cricket. “The aim of all players nowadays is to play IPL and only those who can hit sixes can play IPL in today’s time.
“He practiced hitting sixes relentlessly and all of that is paying off now. If you compare him with other batters in his age group, he has a lot of strength and that is why he hits those really good sixes. Without the superb strength in his wrists and a powerful physical build, one can’t hit sixes strongly,” he said.
In a recent report sent to the RCA, Doru wrote that Choudhary ‘has a very good attitude, is very confident and ready to take any challenge. He is always ready to do anything and will never say no.’ There’s a strong conviction in Doru’s voice when he says Choudhary will play for India very soon. His conviction is rooted in his rare appetite for risk - consistently volunteering for challenges others avoided and making the team win from dire situations.
“It is very difficult to play at number six or seven positions. If you get a finisher like this, one can go up very fast. As Justin Langer said, it is very difficult to play in those positions as you have to play till the end and hit the shots as well. Add to it, you have to manage playing with a tail-ender, which is again a very difficult part.
In a recent report sent to the RCA, Doru wrote that Choudhary ‘has a very good attitude, is very confident and ready to take any challenge. He is always ready to do anything and will never say no.’ There’s a strong conviction in Doru’s voice when he says Choudhary will play for India very soon. His conviction is rooted in his rare appetite for risk - consistently volunteering for challenges others avoided and making the team win from dire situations.
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In that Udaipur restaurant, scepticism of Doru’s friends vanished on witnessing Choudhary’s clinical finish. On that day, when Choudhary came under global spotlight, it merely confirmed the belief Doru identified long before the floodlights of Eden Gardens brought it into everyone’s focus.