Kolkata, Nov 15 (PTI) Long before Simon Harmer returned to India as a polished, battle-hardened offspinner with a decade of reinvention behind him, there was a 10-day session in Mumbai -- a cramped indoor nets session in 2016 -- where everything changed for him.

Harmer calls it the "ammunition" that rebuilt his career.

Umesh Patwal, the unorthodox, itinerant maidan coach behind that transformation, calls it something simpler: sheer hunger.

"He’s not a giving-up guy,” Patwal told PTI from Baroda, recalling the 10-day marathon he put Harmer through nine years ago.

“He looked frustrated in the first couple of days but he kept at it… he wanted to change his life. Kept doing it.” The regimen bordered on brutal. Breakfast meetings turned into 7.30-9.30am sessions, followed by another block t

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