He's the fast bowler with the most wickets in one-dayers this year. But only careful handling will ensure the scrawny debutant evolves into the weapon India has long waited for.

By Rohit Brijnath

Fast bowlers are fiends run amok in a gentleman's game. They attempt dentistry on batsmen with a leather ball. Shower spittle. Are linguists in invective. Vigorously rub the ball on areas of the anatomy most gentlemen would not wish to touch in public. For these men, Attila the Hun is a favourite pin-up.

All this merits saying because the fast bowler at my hotel door exudes the menace of a used-car salesman. His face spells earnest, his manners are impeccable ("He says 'yes' to everything I say," laughs coach Anshuman Gaekwad), his body an advertisement for malnourishment ... no, Ajit Agarkar must have the wrong room. Certainly the wrong profession. This is India's new-ball saviour? The man Mohammed Azharuddin wrote "has impressive attitude" in The Sportstar, who Sachin Tendulkar said was the quickest since Srinath, whom Gaekwad calls "brilliant" and Navjot Sidhu dubs "another Kapil Dev in the making" -- this is him?

Understand the problem, few men's vital statistics have merited such fascination. "It's 5 ft 9 in. and 58 kg," he says wearily, a build more suited for men who bowl at skittles, not at wickets. Maybe he's forged of some tensile steel, for wimps don't get wickets. And in 15 one-day matches, he's got 36 (in his first 15 matches Allan Donald got 26). Better still the debutant is the world's leading wicket taker among fast bowlers in one- day internationals this year -- and leads that list in strike-rate too ( a wicket every 21.66 balls).

But it's not just that. Neither is it the nine times in 15 matches that he's broken the first-wicket partnership often with snarling outswingers, his primary asset, says K. Srikkanth. Nor is it his 4 for 53 (Jayasuriya, Kaluwitharana, De Silva, Ranatunga) in the Singer-Nidahas final. It's not even the surprise that a man with shoulders like a clothes hangar can elicit pace and bounce from a strip of field that has R.I.P written on it -- My God, think batsmen too late, the toothpick is quick. Instead, it is the reality that he's overreached Abey Kuruvilla, Debashish Mohanty, Dodda Ganesh, Harvinder Singh to become, says Gaekwad, "critical to India's future for he gets us the breakthroughs".

He's expensive at 5.06 runs per over. Too raw to baptise as a saviour. But with Srinath battling injury, Prasad regaining form, and the cupboard barer than Mother Hubbard's, he's a messenger of hope. (And with a straight bat he gives India's tail some necessary authority.)

The 20-year-old at the door is not what he seems to be.

A few months ago. At a party for India's 1983 World Cup heroes. Kapil Dev, Indian Knight of the New Ball, seeks out Agarkar, and says, "I like you." Then a thunderbolt hits the boy in the gut. "You come and stay with me in Delhi and we'll work together," says Kapil. The boy smiles, his heart rattles. Explained Kapil later to India Today, stamping his seal of absolute approval: "He has what I had in my youth, I see myself in him."

See what? The bowler or the batsman? It's rude to sound wise, but as we said, the boy's not what you think he is. Till three years ago he was a batsman! It gets worse -- if S.V. Patekar had his way he would have been an Olympic sprinter.

Destiny follows no predictable script. Agarkar's begins with Patekar, 64, his neighbour and, with parents at work, a sort of godfather. As a child, says Patekar, "Ajit was so fast, I told his father we'll make him an Olympian. Then at six, I saw how he stood to receive bowling and said, 'No, we'll make him a cricketer.'" Which is when the windowpanes enter the story. "I broke so many," grins Agarkar, "that the neighbours said I better go to coaching camp in the holidays." Who knows what might have happened if the coach at Shivaji Park Gymkhana, where Patekar took Agarkar, had been there. He wasn't, and on the way back home they met M.S. Patil (Sandeep's father) and he said, "Coach? I know a fellow called Ramakant Achrekar." Ask the reluctant assassin why Achrekar agreed to tutor him and he mumbles: "He ... saw ... I ... had ... something."

He saw, to be precise, the batsman. Shifted, like previous prot g s Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli to Shardaashram school, Agarkar, a fluent No. 4, was piling up Tendulkarish scores like a modest 345 six years ago. Slinging the new ball was fun too, till Tendulkar, playing alongside him at the Cricket Club of India in 1996, watched him bowl for the first time and summoned the boy. "He told me then, concentrate on your bowling."

The rest is as much history as madness. He played the Ranji Trophy, collected 16 wickets in three under-19 Tests in Pakistan this year, got a telephone call from the Indian board and has kids at Mumbai's Opera House leaping onto his car in delight when they spy him. As Harsha Bhogle tells it, "Sanjay Manjrekar, who was Mumbai Ranji Trophy captain, once told me that Ajit has done in a few months what normal bowlers would take two years to do."

Navjot Sidhu is always nice. Still, mention Agarkar, and he gushes: "Are isme kya nahi hain? What temperament, he bowls like he's been playing for the past 10 years." If faces tell stories then Agarkar's match demeanour speaks of an incongruous calm. Articulated by him that look reads: "When I'm in front of 50,000 people I'm most comfortable." From Tendulkar -- and for once worship flicks across his face -- has arrived a basic lesson: "Before the first match he told me, 'Don't think what might happen if you don't do well. Just give it your best shot'."

For all the dignity he exhales, don't, even for a casual second, believe he is some Buddha with a new ball out to renounce violence. As Pakistani Aquib Javed told him, "Indians bowl a good ball and then turn away. Your body language is more aggressive". Believe it. Says Ajit, with that used-car salesman shrug: "Well, I don't want to kill batsmen, but if a guy gets a lucky edge I'll sledge at him."

All this however, the rapid start, the equanimity, stand of no use -- if the toothpick doesn't build muscle, if the repertoire stays at a good outswinger. So many talents have been buried with headstones that read: He Had Potential. Agarkar needs to add a second line -- And He Made Use Of It. A strained glutoi muscle, a pulled thigh muscle, this year injury already made a courtesy call. Trainer Andrew Kokinos has advised upper-body weight work, then 30 minutes on a cycle, then squats. It isn't enough. His action -- "a lot of upper-body speed and fast arm action", explains Mumbai coach Balwinder Singh Sandhu -- strains his back, his shoulder, and requires scrutiny.

In a land where offerings are made for God to send down a fast bowler, he is an investment worth protecting. "Oh, he's tough, he bowled two hours at a stretch in Pakistan," says Srikkanth. Sure he is, but one glimpse at Srinath and Prasad's medical records, one view of an unrelenting tour schedule till the World Cup, is cause for caution. No immediate solution exists. As Gaekwad says, "I don't have much of a choice, he'll have to play. But maybe we'll use him sparingly in a match, spare him at nets."

Agarkar has sensed these dangers. He's figured too that the short balls he regularly offers pass unmolested in domestic cricket but are free breakfast for international batsmen. He grasps also that the essence of his initial impact was surprise, and that it has passed. And he knows his armoury requires a rapid re-stocking. "The slower ball, the in-cutter, I know for every series I will need a new weapon."

Fame has already arrived. One sentence emphasises it: "I need to change my phone number." But with triumph on which he lightly soars will come the turbulence of tragedy. Form will flicker, wickets may dry up, batsmen may read him. The face registers no emotion: "I'm not scared of failure. I mean, in the beginning of the year I was dropped from the Mumbai team (for one match). Now I'm opening the bowling for India."

What Ajit Agarkar is saying is that it's still safe to dream.