Shikhar Dhawan gives Yuzvendra Chahal a new name

27-year-old Yuzvendra Chahal made his international debut less than two years ago. He was fielded as a part of the second string Indian side that toured Zimbabwe in July 2016. The leg-spinner scalped 6 wickets in 3 matches was fairly economical as well. But that was all international cricket he played until August 2017, the tour of Sri Lanka.

After the Champions Trophy where they lost the final to Pakistan, the Indian team management was looking for alternative options as their lead spin bowling pair of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja was both jaded with the amount of cricket they were playing across formats and failed to replicate their Test performance in limited-overs cricket.

Since then he has played all the ODIs and T20Is the team has played. In the 16 ODIs, he has scalped 28 wickets with the best of 5/22 that he picked in the 2nd ODI against South Africa in Centurion. It was his fifer that restricted the Proteas to 118 and the Indian team sailed through with 9 wickets in hand. That also got them a 2-0 lead in the series.

With the bat, it was opener Shikhar Dhawan who scored a half century and skipper Virat Kohli who was unbeaten on 46. For registering his best bowling figures in ODIs, Chahal was awarded the Man of the Match and praises flooded in from all quarters. His teammates, the analysts as well as the opposition lauded the leggies effort.

Following the win, Dhawan posed with the lanky spinner for a selfie and shared it on Twitter. The captain he used got more attention since he named Chahal ‘Chota packet bada bomb’ which roughly translates to pocket size dynamo.

Chota packet bada bomb

He wrote- “Chotey packet mein bada bomb @yuzi_chahal. Well done boy for your great performance.”

Yuvzi replied to it soon and said, “Haha thank you babbar sher”