Prince Yadav had never imagined he would be a professional cricketer.
Until the age of 17, he had not even touched a leather ball. He was a tennis-ball bowler who had started in the fields around his village near Delhi and then got good enough to be called to bowl in tennis-ball tournaments, even beyond his region.
Today, Prince is an important member of Delhi’s limited-overs teams.
After taking the most wickets for Delhi in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy last season, he earned a place in IPL 2025 with Lucknow Super Giants (LSG). It didn’t go too well. He played six games, picked up three wickets, and conceded runs at 9.85. But LSG retained him, and he has continued to do well in domestic cricket. He has 16 wickets in seven matches at the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy at an economy rate of 5.03.
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Prince comes from Dariyapur Khurd, a small village near Najafgarh, best known as the birth place of Virender Sehwag. If Prince’s father had his way, he would have studied hard, and got himself a secure job, like his sister did – she is a teacher at a government school. Ramniwas, Prince’s father, worked in the railways, and has been a farmer since his retirement. But Prince – thus called since he was the youngest and the most pampered – wasn’t interested in academics.
“When I was 12-13, I used to bunk school and go to the village fields to play tennis-ball cricket. This went on for three to four years, and gradually I became a tennis-ball professional,” Prince tells ESPNcricinfo. “At first, I had to spend my own money to play matches and tournaments, but later I started getting paid. Then I began travelling to play tournaments from Surat [in Gujarat, to India’s west] to Mumbai [also in the west] to Kolkata [in West Bengal, in India’s east].
“But my family, especially my father, did not approve of this. He used to scold me so much that I don’t even want to talk about it. But I never took interest in studies, and in the end, even he had to accept it.”
The first turning point was when Lalit Yadav, who has played for Delhi and Delhi Capitals (DC), noticed Prince.
“I was 17 when a new cricket academy started near our village,” Prince, now 24, says. “A leather-ball cricket tournament was being held there, and the villagers wanted me to play for the village team because by then I had made a name in tennis-ball cricket and was bowling well. They thought that maybe I would do well with the leather ball too, but I had never even touched a leather ball. Lalit bhaiya came to watch that tournament, along with Delhi Ranji players Vision Panchal bhaiyaand Rohan Rathi bhaiya. They watched me bowling in two or three matches and advised me to join an academy in Najafgarh, where all three of them used to train.”
That was the Sporting Cricket Club, around 15 kilometres from his village, and Under-19 World Cuppers Pradeep Sangwan (2008) and Mayank Dagar (2016), among others, had played there in their formative years.
“In tennis-ball cricket, the yorker is the only weapon, and I could bowl six yorkers in an over,” Prince says. “I only knew how to bowl yorkers, but I didn’t know what swing and seam were, or what a length ball was. After coming into leather-ball cricket, I had to learn all these things [from Sangwan to a large extent].
“But I would say that playing tennis-ball cricket helped me a lot, because the tennis ball is very light and you have to hit it hard into the pitch to get speed and bounce. Because of this, my arm speed became very fast, and it helped me in bowling hard-length deliveries.”
All Prince’s three IPL wickets have come from yorkers, including that of Travis Head.
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Pujara praises Prince Yadav’s clarity of plans
‘His execution was spot on,’ says Pujara
Within a year of joining the academy, Prince made it to Delhi’s Under-19 team. He played the Cooch Behar Trophy (red-ball cricket) in the 2018-19 season and the Vinoo Mankad Trophy (50-over matches) in the 2019-20 season. In the Vinoo Mankad Trophy, he took ten wickets in eight innings at an average of 26.00 and an economy rate of just 3.79. He couldn’t make the 2020 Under-19 World Cup squad, which included players like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel, Tilak Varma and Ravi Bishnoi, despite being part of the India Under-19 B team in the Challenger Trophy held just before the World Cup. That season, he was also part of Delhi’s senior Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy squad, but did not make the playing XI.
Worse, in December 2020, the BCCI banned him for two years for age fraud and also ruled that after the ban, he could only play senior cricket. So it was back to tennis-ball cricket. “I still play tennis-ball cricket. Even after returning from the IPL, I played a few tennis-ball matches because I love tennis-ball cricket and that is where I come from.”
After the ban ended, Prince performed well in Delhi league matches and earned a place in the senior team. In 2023, he was also a net bowler for LSG.
The Ranji Trophy debut finally came in 2023-24 but he did not get a chance to bowl in his debut game, against Jammu and Kashmir, since poor weather only allowed 42 overs of action. When he did get to bowl, in a fourth-round match against Uttarakhand, he got just one wicket from 33 overs across two innings, and was dropped.
Prince Yadav took 3 for 36 PTI
Then came another turning point. Playing for Purani Dilli 6 in the Delhi Premier League, he took 13 wickets in ten games and had an economy rate of 8.18. Purani Dilli 6 was captained by Rishabh Pant and coached by Vijay Dahiya. Pant is the captain of LSG and Dahiya is the team’s assistant coach. At the mega auction in 2025, LSG bought Prince at his base price of INR 30 lakh.
“Getting picked in the IPL because of DPL is fine, but the biggest benefit of DPL was it helped me return into domestic cricket,” Prince says. “Last season, I played the full white-ball season for Delhi and took the most wickets [11 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and the same number in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy] for them. After that, I also got chances with LSG.”
“My first [IPL] season was decent. There were many learning moments, and I learned a lot from it. I was told just before the tournament that I would get chances in the opening matches because Avesh [Khan] bhaiya and Akash Deep bhaiya were not fit. I also knew that if I wanted to make my place, I had to perform well in those matches,” Prince says. “I got a lot of tips from Zaheer [Khan, the mentor till last season] sir, and he helped me improve my action. I am still in touch with him, and whenever I have questions about my bowling, I ask him. He helped me understand the game and learn how to bowl according to the situation.”
After playing in the IPL, people have started recognising Prince. But for him, the greatest satisfaction is that his family, especially his father, is now happy with him. “When people recognise him as ‘Prince’s father’, he feels very proud,” Prince says. “He is happy now, and if he is happy, then I am happy too.”
This story was originally published on ESPNcricinfo Hindi
