Summers in Jodhpur are brutal. Under the harsh sun, where the temperatures soared to as high as 51 degrees Celsius on some days in 2016, Ravi Bishnoi would jump the gate of his cricket academy to bowl. And then bowl some more. The reason? His coaches - Shahrukh Pathan and Pradyot Singh - had given him specific drills to improve as a legspinner.

"Because of the heat, we wouldn't even be in the academy but he would come in and bowl. He would come in at 11 am and would keep on bowling till 1 pm or 2 pm," remembers Pathan. "The heat was so harsh that it was difficult to even stand in the sun. And then there was this guy who would finish his morning session and then return for more."

Bishnoi's early struggles are well documented. As Pathan and Pradyot set out to fulfil their dream to set up a cricket academy in Jodhpur, they were forced to make every penny count. To keep the costs down, the two coaches - and the 6-7 kids - laid the foundation on their own, prepared the pitch and spruced up the facility to start their dream. The facility was finally up and running in March 2016. After a tough six months - where Bishnoi frequently made excuses to go and work in the academy - the players and the coaches finally had a place they could call their second home.

Bishnoi's father - Mangilal Bishnoi - was a headmaster at a government school. While he wasn't opposed to the idea of Ravi playing cricket, he understandably wanted his son to focus on studies first. Rajasthan Cricket Association's troubles with the BCCI only added to Mangilal's doubts. "In Rajasthan, there were only trials at that point," says Pathan. "He couldn't make the cut to the top 200 in the Under-19 trials. He had come home crying and that's when his father told us that Ravi wouldn't play anymore. We went to his house and asked his father for two years. He was apprehensive because children weren't even graduating to play for Rajasthan and we told him that Ravi will play for India.

"His father had apprehensions about the game. It's not like Ravi wasn't allowed to play but the focus was more on studies."

As Ravi worked on his transition to a spinner from a medium pacer, there were some key issues that needed fixing. "When he was about 10-12 years old, he was a small kid and his height also wasn't much," says Pathan on the decision to turn Ravi into a legspinner. "The first time we asked him to bowl legspin, the first thing we had to teach him was the grip. When he bowled the first ball, he took a long run-up and bowled a flatter delivery. It was quick and there was no flight or air. The first delivery itself was a googly. Even though we tried a lot to get him to bowl legspin, he kept bowling googlies. His wrist would open up and he would end up bowling googlies.

"As a coach, when you look at kids, you can do two things. You can try and change things or try and figure out how to change deficiencies to strengths. Because his head would fall away, he would land the googlies on the leg stump. That's the issue he struggled with in junior levels. We tried to make his googly his lethal weapon.

"His head and the non-bowling arm was always away from the body at the start. We had to fix that first. We fixed the alignment of the body and worked on the rhythm. Once that was done, we worked on his run-up. He would take a longer run-up but it was always straight. We got him used to run in at an angle. It's not like the change happened overnight. We had to work for about eight months."