Roorkee, in Uttarakhand, is home to Asia’s first engineering college. But now, the city has a new badge of honour - of producing its first-ever IPL superstar, Akash Madhwal.

Hailing from the Dhandera region of Roorkee, it was tennis-ball cricket with his friends that catered to Madhwal’s passion. In time, he earned the reputation of being one of the most in-demand bowlers going around. All this, while he pursued engineering and also had a run-of-the-mill job. This was until a new dawn broke.

2018-19 signalled a dynamic shift in his life choice and ambition to play cricket full-time. When the Cricket Association of Uttarakhand (CAU) got affiliated with the BCCI, Madhwal took the trials to sharpen and fine-tune his cricket skills for a more organised version of the sport. And that’s where we would meet the likes of Avtar Singh, who was also Rishabh Pant’s coach before the latter opted to represent Delhi, Wasim Jaffer and Manish Jha.

Avtar’s initial bits of advice remained ingrained in the mind of Akash Madhwal, who would use it in his initial bowling sessions with leather balls. The glint in his eyes was spotted by his then coach Wasim Jaffer, who handed him his debut for the state in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament against Karnataka. Despite conceding 21 runs in his two overs, it was a step up in the process to become a professional bowler.

Manish Jha, a former Services cricketer, took over the reins at Uttarakhand and was instrumental in identifying and trying to fix the loopholes in Madhwal’s path.

“When he came for the trials in 2019. We all were very impressed. He is skiddy and quick with a smooth action. There was an X-factor in him. Wasim bhai roped him in straight away and gave him a match against Karnataka in Syed Mushtaq Ali. He was wayward and looked underprepared. Next year, during the Covid, when the Ranji Trophy got cancelled, and I took up the job of head coach, I told him that he will play all three formats, no matter if he went for runs. I assured him that he would get to play all the matches,” Jha said in an interview with news publication Indian Express.

“Since he played a lot of tennis ball cricket, the pace was there, but it was accuracy that he was lacking. He used to experiment a lot with his bowling. My only concern was, if you can bowl quick and straight, why are you going for the slower one. Slowly he got what we were trying to tell him, and you can see the result,” he added.

A couple of years in the pipeline, Akash Madhwal would find himself on the radar of IPL’s scouts. After a trial with Royal Challengers Bangalore ended, the Uttarakhand bowler was called up for trials at Reliance's facility in Navi Mumbai.

"He had been playing only tennis-ball cricket until 2018, so his physical conditioning to go through the rigours of a full season wasn't there, so there had to be a lot of work done on him," said Anand Rajan, a former Madhya Pradesh seamer to ESPNCricinfo.

"Akash was raw, but he made up for it with a tremendous attitude. He bowled an excellent yorker. You could see he was skiddy, he was deceptive. As a batter, you couldn't switch off because he would attack the stumps all the time," Rajan added.

Rigorous training for fitness levels and his bowling ability would finally bear fruit as he was signed as a mid-season replacement for Suryakumar Yadav in IPL 2022. That was a huge step forward. Later in the year, he was handed over the T20 captaincy of Uttarakhand ahead of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. His record? Four wins in six games.

This confidence was the driving force behind his first entire season with Mumbai Indians. And the rest is, well, history. Eight matches, 14 wickets, a record 5/5 in the Eliminator match against Lucknow Super Giants and gold-plated titles of ‘First bowler to claim a five-wicket haul in an IPL playoff’ and ‘Best bowling performance by an uncapped Indian bowler in IPL history.’

This, in brief, is just the first chapter in the story of Uttarakhand’s first IPL superstar. Given the kind of start he’s had, many more chapters will be added to Akash Madhwal’s folklore in the coming future.