Rising Pune Supergiant bowler Jaydev Unadkat has been in impressive form so far this season. Ahead of his side's first finals, we take a look at how the left-arm pacer has transformed himself from a nobody to the leader of the pace attack of RPS. Jaydev Unadkat, who hails from Porbandar, became the third bowler to claim a hat-trick in the tenth season of the IPL. It may be recalled here that Unadkat had found it difficult to cement his place in playing XI for his previous teams but now the scenario has completely changed. The pace battery has been effectively led by Jaydev Unadkat in this year’s IPL. The youngster has always lived up to the captain’s expectations. Unadkat scalped five wickets against the Sunrisers Hyderabad which also included a maiden over hat-trick – changing the course of the match in just one over. With 22 wickets, Unadkat is the second in the list of leading wicket-takers this year, only behind Bhuvneshwar Kumar (26). In a recent interview to The Hindu, Unadkat himself spoke about this transformation and said, “In the last couple of years, I didn’t get much of a support from the past captains despite having a fruitful domestic season. Probably that hunger to do well was the difference from the past couple of seasons. Skill-wise, I have always got it in me. It’s just about capitalising on it. The first match was important this season and once I did well, I just built on that.” In 2015, he featured for the Delhi Daredevils but did not find much game-time and in 2016 he played only one match in the IPL. Things have changed this time around as he has introduced more varieties like the slower ones which have worked well. Noticeably, Unadkat became the third bowler in IPL to bowl a hat-trick maiden after Samuel Badree, who was the first and Lasith Malinga. He did so after bowling some crucial overs in the powerplay and then went on to defend 13 runs in the final over.
