Akhilesh Reddy Bodugum has been a part of Washington Freedom’s Major League Cricket journey from its inaugural edition in 2023. Though Akhilesh did not play a game for us in both the editions of MLC, he has quickly come up the rungs spending valuable time with Head Coach Ricky Ponting and the support staff.

With opportunities few and far between for his earlier side, Hyderabad, Akhilesh decided to switch allegiance to his country of birth, the United States, to pursue his cricketing dreams. He has evolved steadily, and his time under the watchful eyes of Ponting has helped him immensely.

Standing at six feet and four inches, Akhilesh has the advantage of garnering bounce from driving lengths with his high release point. More than turn, Akhilesh relies on his accuracy and stump-to-stump line, which makes him a tricky customer with the new ball. 

The 24-year-old off-spinner also got the much-needed validation that he was looking for from his conversations with Ponting, who reiterated the role of spinners in the T20 format. 

“He said there is definitely a future for finger spinners as long as you're moving the ball both ways like you do. He specifically said, like you do, which was actually good to hear. He emphasized on being accurate and hitting the stumps most of the time,” Akhilesh was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz about his interaction with Ponting.

“And it's quite magical just training around him. I remember a net session where he encouraged me after every ball. That constant validation from him just made me want to keep bowling that same ball over and over. Inadvertently that was improving my accuracy."

Akhilesh also got a chance to interact with Nathan Lyon, one of the greatest off-spinners in the game, during an off-season training stint with us at the Cricket NSW facility in Sydney. It was a fanboy moment for young Akhilesh who also did not miss the chance to pick the master’s brains.

"I asked him what his mindset is when he's playing a T20 game. And he said that every time he's bowling an over in T20s, he is always thinking where he can get those two dot deliveries in an over from. That's his main focus,” Akhilesh recollected.

“I also asked him how he gets the amount of revs on the ball that he gets. So he showed me his wrist position and how he gets his wrist behind and over the ball which is why he gets more revs on the ball. He further showed me a couple of his variations like his arm ball and the undercutter. It was a good conversation."

Those conversations worked wonders for Akhilesh as he went about adding new skills to his arsenal. The carrom ball, which Akhilesh has developed over a year, was on offer during the recently concluded MAX60 2024 in the Caribbean.

“My off-spin release is in front of the hand where I use my index finger to spin the ball into the batter. Now, I'm trying to use the middle finger with the same front-on release, where it comes off like a leg cutter. So the idea is to spin the ball away from the right-hander. The release stays the same, it's just two different fingers that are being put to work,” Akhilesh spoke candidly about his new experiment with the ball.

Akhilesh had an excellent outing for New York Strikers in the tournament, which had games of 10-over a side, picking up five wickets from four innings at an impressive average of 14.40 and a strike rate of 7.40. His exploits with the ball helped the Strikers to reach the final of the tournament. 

Akhilesh’s 2/19 in the final against the Caribbean Tigers went in vain as the Strikers lost the contest by 56 runs. However, the Strikers, impressed by Akhilesh’s performance in the MAX 60 2024, have drafted him into the NYS Lagos team that will play in the Zim-Afro T10 tournament. The tournament is scheduled to start on September 21 in Harare.

Akhilesh, who currently plays for Houston Hurricanes in the United States Minor League, continues to nurse his ambitions of playing international cricket for the USA. With the skills that he possesses with the ball and the hard work that he is putting in, Akhilesh is probably on the right track.