Six years ago, a team from New Zealand had come to Chennai to work on how to play spin. Will Young was a part of it. Except he needed special permission.
See, he was from Central Districts. And this training program was being conducted by Canterbury. Dude was basically gatecrashing. And what was he gatecrashing? A class trip to the library. Who does that?
Young chose to spend his September halfway across the world because he thought it'd be good preparation… for an A team tour that was coming up. That's how serious he is about his game.
The wider world knows Young as a top-order batter with a reasonable record - averages 42.28 in ODIs with two centuries and six fifties from 24 innings. It's also no secret that he flows into his drives, their beauty checked only by the fact that he is bottom-hand dominant. And that's sort of it.
Within New Zealand, there's always been hype around him. He was captain of their Under-19 team at the World Cup in 2012, where they made it to the semi-finals. He was already playing first-class cricket by then, a teenager spending time on the field with veterans like Matthew Sinclair, Chris Martin and Daryl Tuffey. He went on to lead Central Districts to the one-day Ford Trophy and four-day Plunket Shield titles.
Prodigies don't usually have to wait until they're 30 to carve a place for themselves. But that's been Young's lot. The Test match he was supposed to debut in was scrapped because of a terrorist attack in Christchurch. He injured his shoulder at a preparatory camp for the 2019 World Cup and ended up watching from home. Six days ago, when he finally got to represent New Zealand in this prestigious tournament, he was caught down the leg side for a duck.
There's good luck. There's bad luck. And then there's what Young has, where everything seems to be coming together just so it can unravel spectacularly. Picture winning the lottery, except on the way to collect the money, you get hit by lightning.
All high-performance athletes need to have a working relationship with failure and Young understands that. That trip to Chennai in 2017 was about closing holes in his game. He perfected his sweep shot there under the supervision of Gary Stead who made him play without his front pad. With nothing but the bat to protect himself, he developed the intuition needed to pick the right ball to sweep and the repetition helped in developing the muscle memory needed to play the shot confidently.
Years later, in 2022 when he made 89 in a Test match in Kanpur against a bowling attack of R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, he referenced those lessons as invaluable.
"Will took that chance to come over here [six years ago], which I think is a testament to his growth and mindset as well and thinking about the future in how he can grow his game," Stead recalled, in the lead-up to New Zealand's World Cup game against Bangladesh at Chepauk, on Wednesday. "Hopefully, you can lean back on those experiences when you get times like now as well.
"The whole idea is, in New Zealand, we get conditions that are pace and bounce and usually don't spin a lot. So, it was a chance for Will - and others - to grow their games and experience real differences in what we would normally face - the heat, for one, dealing with the sweat, the turning pitches, and the changing conditions are the ideas we were sort of looking for to try and be able to grow their games."
Yet for a few hours, as Rachin Ravindra flayed England to all parts, it seemed like Young's World Cup campaign was in jeopardy. Here was a player who had everything. The ball pinged off his bat with such a sound. He was only 23 too. Named after Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar. The story wrote itself. The future had arrived.
Ravindra came in at No. 3 that day. The way he bats, steadily picking up steam, he'd be wasted down the order. Devon Conway and Kane Williamson are locked in this team. So that left the guy who fell for a duck.
Except Young had earned New Zealand's trust over two difficult tours to the subcontinent. In Bangladesh, he made the difference in a contest between second-string sides, his 70 off 80 balls securing a series win for New Zealand. And earlier, in Pakistan, he was that rare right-handed batter that Shaheen Shah Afridi couldn't dismiss with the new ball. Not even after four tries.
Young produced extremely respectable numbers against one of the most dangerous quicks in the world - 48 runs in 54 balls with eight fours - and only went up a notch when the spinners came on. He hit Shadab Khan and Mohammed Nawaz for a combined 73 runs in 58 balls and suffered just two dismissals.
One innings, in particular, stands out in the mind of Young's domestic coach Glenn Pocknall. "It could have been the deal breaker for him to cement his opening spot in the ODI team. He scored 87, opening against Pakistan in Pakistan in May this year, I think it was. An innings showcasing his skills navigating the new ball and then playing the spinners with ease on a wearing surface. An innings which allowed New Zealand to beat Pakistan in Pakistan, which is a great feat."
At almost the last chance he had to fashion himself a meaningful ODI career, Young has come good. He is 30 now. If he had missed this World Cup, he probably wasn't going to get another. It feels like just a reward for a player who just will not give up.
Young had 200 domestic matches to his name by the time he made his debut for New Zealand in 2020. The closest he would get until then was the A team and maybe that's why he didn't mind country-hopping in preparation for even that level of cricket.
"He has great work ethic and that Chennai trip in 2017 shows what he's willing to do to get better," Pocknall said. "Every great player is also aware of the areas they want to improve in, then dedicate their time to putting in the yards to make those gains and Will certainly fits that bill.
"Quite often he has been given one-off games or come in at the last minute and performed well. This is another fine example of his ability to show up on the big stage. He has shown a huge relentless drive to keep improving and it's this mindset which has allowed him to overcome any type of setback."
Young has had to wait his turn. He's had to feed on scraps. He's had to push himself in pursuit of a dream that kept slipping away. He's persevered through all of that and proven once and for all that where there's a Will, there's a way.