Breaching Bastions: Young and the extraordinary

"And now to sit here talking to you...and having won the series 3-0 is something that none of us even dreamed of, to be honest. It's just...it's just incredible!"

It's less than 24 hours since Will Young clinched the Player of the Series award in New Zealand's stunning win in India. The morning after - another bright and sunny day in Mumbai - Young is still soaking it all in, trying to take stock of what he and his have achieved. It's what the group has been doing too, he says. Over "beer, soft drinks or whatever" and music.

"I remember in Pune, we obviously had the hour [long] bus journey back to the hotel, so we had the speaker going with the songs and everyone was singing along, which was fun."

In a week, New Zealand have managed to replicate those celebrations in Mumbai as well. "When we get back to the hotel, we've been superbly looked after in all the hotels we've stayed at. They put us up in a team room and we sit around and we're still wearing our whites and our baggy black caps. And yeah, just celebrations continue into the night."

In a conservative estimate, "we'll say it went past bedtime," Young says with a hearty laugh. It's one of the few times that he lets himself out fully. Some chuckles seep through now and then, but Young is largely measured, thoughtful and even-toned in expressing himself. At a press conference the previous evening, there was even a cheeky suggestion that he has a good voice for podcasts, met with a chuckle.

The happiness is wholesome, and palpable. Understandably so, for days like these don't come often for a cricketer, even lesser if you're from New Zealand, given how much lesser they play in comparison to a few others. And even more so for someone like Young, who has had an extraordinary journey himself, mirroring in many ways the giant steps that New Zealand kept taking through the series, surprising everyone around them and sometimes even themselves.

Pune showed that Bengaluru was no flash in the pan, while Mumbai came as the fitting crowning glory. Young, who has stood in for arguably New Zealand's greatest ever batter on their toughest challenge, had announced his presence with a steady unbeaten 48 in a tricky chase in Bengaluru. By the time his twin fifties came in Mumbai, he had everyone in awe of how a good defensive base could still be in vogue in this day and age. So much so, you wonder if he was given the award just for someone to make an overarching point on the useful batting methods of yore. It took Young himself by a little surprise.

"It did feel funny because there were some incredible performances from both teams throughout the series. Hundreds scored on both sides, big wicket bags and some superstar names..."

But Young, like everyone else, realised the merit in the decision. "I guess it was just an award that awarded consistency, really.

"I went out and in each innings I tried to grab back some momentum, especially batting at three. If you lose the first wicket and you lose a couple, you can be in real trouble. So, I just tried to go out there and even if sometimes it was just small partnerships of 30 or 40, it meant that the boys could just take a breather and not lose those wickets and clumps and build in innings and build a partnership. I managed to do that each time I went out to bat," he reflects accurately.

He may not have scored a hundred in the series, but Young's balls-faced tally of 460 towers over the next-best which is nearly a 100 fewer. On surfaces where survival instincts have been put to test rather harshly, these crucial balls ended up as difference-makers.

Young has been coming to India since 2017 as part of various 'A' tours and other camps and has been to the subcontinent a few times before as a reserve batter and has had sporadic chances to showcase his skillsets at the Test level. He reveals with some glee about how he kept fine-tuning his crafts, even at odd times like while running the drinks around in Galle or even during the rain-affected Noida Test against Afghanistan.

At 31, Young's New Zealand career may not have taken off since coming in at a prodigious teenage level, but he'd been chipping away at it, waiting for a breakthrough like this. A constant companion in this journey was a work ethic obsessively centred around self-improvement. "I've got to prepare to bat anywhere in the top five, whether it be opening the batting or being down at five or six perhaps. I've just come to be at peace with that and to prepare myself for whenever that opportunity may arise," he says.

Glenn Pocknall, the coach at Central Districts, offers an insight into the kind of work Young regularly puts in.

"The surface [at Hawke's Bay] had been dug up as the head groundsman Phil Stoyanoff was going to re-sow it. Phil asked us if we wanted to use it as it would be perfect for spinning conditions so we jumped at the opportunity as we saw huge benefit for Will and what he would be coming up against.

"The ball spat, turned, rolled and bounced in different directions so we had good discussions about defensive stride out in front of pad, the angle of bat face etc.," reveals Pocknall.

The preparation for a subcontinent tour had to happen in conditions that were at the other end of the spectrum back home, and Young lets out a light chuckle when talking about the innovative methods to counter it.

"It's actually really difficult in New Zealand, especially in the winter, to emulate exactly what the Indian pitchers are going to be like or Sri Lankan or the subcontinent wicket. We try our best and different groundsmen have different techniques. Where I live in Hawke's Bay, there's one particular wicket, which Glenn Pocknall was talking about, where it was completely scarified. You'd just throw offies and it would be bouncing and going everywhere," says Young.

"I think you've just got to embrace that sometimes. You're not always going to go into a net and feel a million dollars and hit the ball in the middle of the bat every time," he adds.

Before the block of six Tests in the subcontinent, when Young was undergoing some of this mind-boggling preparation, he was not even a part of the first eleven. There was a good chance that he might not have featured in India at all, let alone sit back and reminisce on his heroics.

"I guess it's just a love for the game and a love for representing New Zealand and a love for batting," he says about what makes him go through this grind. "It's tricky to keep going all the time. Sometimes it's a long career and you go through ups and downs. But at the end of the day, if you can put your failures or your successes to one side and you just look at how you can improve and how you can prepare well and you hold yourself accountable to those things. For me, that gives me energy and that gives me drive and focus to keep getting better," he adds.

Young's preparations offers a microcosm of what a lot of New Zealand's batters did as preparation. Rachin Ravindra had spent time in the CSK academy, while Daryl Mitchell had sessions with Siddartha Lahiri of Paarl and Rajasthan Royals in Dubai. Each of them found different ways to skin the cat. Rachin was more wristy, Mitchell loved to loft down the ground, Tom Latham and Devon Conway would prefer the sweep more while Young binded them all from that No. 3 spot in his own way.

"When I first go out to bat, the field starts off in a certain manner. As a batsman, you feel comfortable with some fields and you don't feel comfortable with others. One thing that not just I spoke about but the whole batting group spoke about is having the courage to take a risk to get the field that you like. Once you get that field, you can bat more normally, if you know what I mean. Then the test is all about how long you can maintain that for. It's tricky because Ashwin or Jadeja or Kuldeep or Washington, they're all such good bowlers.

"They won't just do the same thing over. They're thinking as well. They're all very, very smart, very, very experienced cricketers. They don't let you just sit. I guess it's a game of chess really where there's a whole lot of moving parts. You've just got to try and understand what you can bring to that certain situation. More specifically, you can get the field that you want so that you can get singles or you can find the boundary when needed," explains Young.

Alongside the shared goals, and amongst the many incredible achievements that they would look back upon, there'd be a special individual memory for each of the batters as well, and that could well extend to the team.

"If you're playing the game for stats or for numbers or for success all the time, you're just not going to get it. I think to keep yourself sane in this game we play, you've got to attach yourself to more tangible things that you can control and stick to that, which makes life a bit easier," philosophises Young.

And you can believe that's not merely a word for the wise. Especially not after they've just achieved the inconceivable.