Sushant Mishra: Setbacks, smiles and a Dhoni flex

Keep aside the cricket, for a moment. If you are in the same room as Sushant Mishra, you are bound to feel a warm, bright ball of energy zooming around. Any chat has a certain garnish of humour and leg-pulling. No wonder, he's a favourite among Rajasthan Royals' reel creators this year.

Outside the pitch, a smile barely ever leaves him. Even two stress fractures of the back haven't been able to dim that.

Sushant comes from the same U19 batch as Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel and Ravi Bishnoi, all IPL mainstays and now his RR teammates. But it wasn't until last week that he finally held an IPL cap, pushed back in time by one setback after another.

The breakthrough came on the back of a stellar Syed Mushtaq Ali campaign: Sushant finished as the joint highest wicket-taker (22 wickets at 17.18), playing a key role in Jharkhand's title triumph.

"I would love to be just 20% of Jasprit Bumrah," Sushant tells Cricbuzz.

Hailing from Ranchi, Sushant naturally felt a deep connect with MS Dhoni's journey. He cheekily says his biggest flex in life is that Dhoni knows him by name and face. But Sushant's bowling was heavily influenced by Zaheer Khan and Mitchell Starc.

At the 2020 U19 World Cup in South Africa, Sushant was a chubby-faced, brisky quick who could swing the ball both ways, armed with a mean bouncer. "At that time, my bowling was very emotion driven," Sushant says. "Now it's more practical thinking. Now I don't bowl with emotion, I bowl with purpose".

"It's not like: 'Oh, he hit me for a six, I'll bowl faster'. There's maturity now".

But age alone did not bring that maturity. Sushant has been hit hard by injuries since his teens.

Sushant first got a taste of IPL in 2020, signed up as a net bowler for Royal Challengers Bengaluru. He closely observed Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers and picked up bits from Dale Steyn. Two years later, he was signed as a replacement player at Sunrisers Hyderabad. But no game time followed.

The big breakthrough came in 2024 when Gujarat Titans paid INR 2.20 Cr to secure him. Sushant was all geared up for his maiden IPL. But it all crumbled suddenly.

"I was happy, excited. And then suddenly everything came crashing down. One night before the match, we were practicing and there was a spasm in my back. The next morning, we found out I had a stress reaction, which became a stress fracture.

"That was a devastating moment. I couldn't overcome that. For the next 10-15 days, I was in the same zone, sad-sad-sad."

"But very slowly – and it took time – I got out of it. This injury lasted for a long time, but when it healed, I tried coming back. Then, I had a quadriceps tear. I couldn't play any cricket in 2024."

There was another setback right after. When he started his rehab, he had a further back issue. The fracture wasn't a bony union, and had to be corrected by prolonged rehabilitation or surgery. Hoping to prevent any relapse, Sushant opted for the latter.

"I did that for mental clarity."

"In all these 1.5 years, I have understood that you must be grateful for where you are. Only then will the path ahead open for you."

The rehab from his back injury was gruelling, but Sushant was just happy to be back on his feet. "I would tell myself: If not here, where else would I be, on a hospital bed?"

Sushant hasn't let the demons of injury seep into his bowling psyche. "When I'm playing a match, I don't pay attention to the limits of my body. Because I have trained so much, I have bowled so much that I can give my 100% in any situation."

It also necessitated a key technical change. Sushant has always been a 50% side-on bowler. He worked on getting his left shoulder forward to improve cross alignment and take some load off his back.

"Even if you're taking out 10-15% of that load, it's a big change."

To find his way back, Sushant had to first reclaim his space in the Jharkhand setup. He says the association gave him clarity ahead of the 2025/26 season, and he had his role chalked out months in advance. It included two overs at the death.

It helped that a like-minded team was filled with youngsters, almost everyone under 28, making them all "fearless". It also helped that captain Ishan Kishan was around as a "big brother".

"Kishan bhaiya told me: 'In T20s, you will be hit around. You should know how to turn a 25-run over into a 15-run over'."

Sushant's USP isn't restricting but picking up wickets in clusters. He went wicketless just once in 11 SMAT matches, building on his pace with a mixed-bag of cutters, wide yorkers and bouncers. The teenage aggression is still intact, even if the head evaluates, not just reacts.

He says the time away helped work on his "homework", and he would work out his plans in writing, to glance over them when leaving for the ground.

In the pre-season camp, he worked closely with Sandeep Sharma and Shane Bond. "At the Nagpur (RR) facility, there's nothing else but cricket. Whatever you need to help improve the game, it's all there."

On his IPL debut, Sushant couldn't exactly find his radar. Probably nervous, he repeatedly sent down wides looking for the perfect angle, but found some more control in his second spell. Knowing Sushant, it was just another learning experience.

The setbacks have changed him as a cricketer but haven't dimmed a buzzing social animal. He still spends his free time playing Battlegrounds Mobile with his friends.

"You know I am an extrovert: it takes me less time to gel with people," he says. "I feel if you're good to others, why will anyone misunderstand you? Sometimes, people do feel not being serious all the time also means you're not serious about my game, but that's not true."

Sushant says his happy-go-lucky attitude is inherited from his family: "Saare hi pagal hain. Haste rehte hain. (Everyone's mad. They keep laughing around)".

But if there's one person he could never faff around with was Rahul Dravid, his former U19 coach.

It was another India legend who inspired him to take up the game. When India won the World Cup in 2011, Sushant recalls dancing in celebration with a crowd outside MS Dhoni's new house, ten minutes away from his.

But it wasn't until two years later, when he saw Dhoni in the flesh, was he enraptured by the game. "I was 12 years old: there was a Champions League T20 match in Ranchi. When I saw him step out of his Hummer, I was trembling as a little kid."

"When I met him after the U19 World Cup, I was happy he knew me by name. We've spoken about cricket, and being from Ranchi, him knowing me is my life's biggest flex!"

Sushant did not cross paths with Dhoni in his debut season, but has a lot more to look forward to. His ultimate aim is to win India the World Cup, although he knows he must go through all the small milestones before the big one comes.

Sushant won't let all of that come at the cost of losing his shine. "I love making people laugh. And if they make fun of me, then I laugh with them too, because it's fun if everyone's laughing."

"I have now realised if you are in any situation in life, you should just enjoy it. You and I are here (in this interview), if we don't enjoy it, it makes no sense to make just serious faces. I just want to keep life as light as possible, as simple as possible."