Kense: Teen leg-spinner from Nagaland on IPL teams’ radar
MUMBAI: Kra-vi-toe it is,” Khrievitso Kense said over a phone call from Chennai. Quarantining there ahead of the Vijay Hazare Trophy one-dayers, the 16-year-old leg-spinner is used to people not getting that ‘h’ and ‘s’ in his first name are silent. And then he is asked about his roots.
Kense comes from Dimapur, Nagaland’s biggest city. His forefathers belonged to Angami Naga ethnic group who were once into cultivation and livestock-rearing. Kense has no idea about the tribe’s past. “I don’t know what my name means,” he said with a sheepish laugh.
What Kense does know is how to spin the ball past a righthander’s bat, fast. So impressed were some IPL talent scouts that the leg-spinner made the 292player shortlist from 1194 applicants for the auction in Chennai on February 18. Come auctionday, Kense, his five siblings, parents and his doting grandfather will be hoping for a cricketer from Nagaland to break into the Indian Premier League.
Nagaland coach Kanwaljit Singh has helped Kense catapult from U-16 to Nagaland’s T20 side in Mushtaq Ali Trophy this year. Singh, a domestic great (369 first-class wickets), had narrowly missed the India call. Now, it’s his coaching motto that a young talent should be tracked before it’s too late. “I had told our captain Jonathan (Rongsen) to bring any youngster he finds exciting to trials. I found Khrievitso’s fastish leg-breaks very exciting. We drafted him in the team straightaway,” Singh said. Kense lived up to Singh’s faith by picking seven wickets in four Mushtaq Ali games. It was Singh’s second opinion Mumbai Indians’ talent scouts sought before Kense was called for their pre-auction trials. Since then, Rajasthan Royals too have trialled Kense.
Long before Nagaland and the other North-eastern teams were integrated in the domestic calendar in 2018 following BCCI reforms, Kense had been bitten by the cricket bug. “When I was seven years old, I would play tennis ball cricket with my friends,” he said. “The first ball I bowled with the leather ball was when I was 12. My leg-spin began to come out well. In Nagaland, football is very popular. I also play football and table tennis, but on TV, I only watch cricket.”
Live television and streaming of IPL have been a major source of attraction for cricket in those pockets of India where it is not the first sport. Kense’s favourite Indian cricketer is Rohit Sharma. But in his area of expertise, he idolises Afghanistan leg-spinner Rashid Khan. “My action is simpler, not like Rashid Khan,” he said. “But I like his leg-spin, and his attitude.”
Singh said Kense is some way from mastering the googly. “He bowls the fastish leg-breaks, the top spinner, the straighter one. The googly, he needs to work on that one,” he said. “I will work on it with him after the Vijay Hazare. I don’t want to rush him into variations. Right now, he is working on using the crease.”
Back home, Kense’s family is getting used to their secondyoungest child travelling the country. “Chennai, Bangalore, Assam, Himachal…” Kense rattled off his list of cricket expeditions. His father? “He is a carpenter. Now, he only goes to work sometimes,” he said. Mother is a house-keeper, eldest brother, 25, is studying MA, and all other sisters are studying.
Kense often dreams of bowling in IPL. “I have not seen him succumb to pressure. Khrievitso is bindaas (relaxed),” said Singh. “Even when he is hit, he finds a way to come back. I can say one thing, whichever team picks him won’t regret it. It will be a big breakthrough for North-east cricket, if he can make it to IPL.”