Instead of adding some bizarre aspects to his bowling, debutant Kuldeep Yadav used flight, dip and turn to puzzle the Australian batsmen
Karthik Krishnaswamy in Dharamsala25-Mar-20172:12
Left-arm wristspin looks tough to face because it’s rare – Kuldeep
It wasn’t a wicket-taking ball, but it was one of the best deliveries Kuldeep Yadav bowled on his first day as a Test cricketer in Dharamsala. It hovered above Matthew Wade’s eye line, drawing him forward, making him believe he could get close to the pitch of the ball and drive. Once it reached the apogee of its flight, the ball began descending steeply and landed a few inches short of Wade’s expectations.It made Wade stretch and reach out in front of his body, and still, he didn’t meet it on the half-volley. It ripped away off the pitch and beat the outside edge.When teams select spinners of unusual styles, they often do it because of the mystery. Late last year in Adelaide, South Africa handed Tabraiz Shamsi a Test debut largely because they thought the pink ball and floodlights would make his left-arm wristspin harder to pick out of the hand and off the seam. He played that one Test, since which South Africa have reverted to the left-arm orthodox of Keshav Maharaj.Kuldeep, like Shamsi, is a left-arm wristspinner who can be hard to pick out of the hand. Glenn Maxwell found that out in the worst way possible when he was squared up and bowled off the thigh pad while playing down the wrong line of a googly. Wade later said he had found it difficult to read Kuldeep as well when he was new to the crease.”Yeah, it took a couple of balls to get used to it. He bowled a lot of different deliveries. He bowled a lot of legspinners with a scrambled seam and then his wrong’un was scrambled seam as well, so it took a few balls to get used to it. But once you stayed out there for a little while, you got a read on him.”Kuldeep’s bowling on Saturday, though, wasn’t all about mystery. It wasn’t even primarily about mystery. Take, for instance, that ball to Wade. It had beaten the batsman even before it landed. It had beaten him in the air.The same was the case with the ball he bowled to dismiss Peter Handscomb – it hung enticingly in the air, drifting wider and wider, all that width tempting the batsman into a drive away from the body.The wicket of Pat Cummins? Classic legspinner caught-and-bowled against left-handed batsman, except in the mirror. No mystery here, just flight and dip and turn.This was the first day of the Test match, and the HPCA Stadium pitch was unlike the pitches at the three previous venues of this series. There were no footmarks to exploit just yet, little help by way of up-and-down bounce, and only a few cracks to disturb the equanimity of an otherwise firm surface. This wasn’t yet a surface for India’s fingerspinners to thrive on.The ball to dismiss Handscomb had flight, drift and turn to beat the batsman•Associated PressWristspinners, though, tend to extract a decent amount of turn and bounce from harder pitches. In that sense, India’s decision to go with a third spinner, and to pick Kuldeep rather than the offspinner Jayant Yadav, was thoroughly sound.Wristspinners, however, can also be erratic, and when Kuldeep came on for the first time, with lunch just minutes away, India couldn’t afford erratic. Australia were 120 for 1 and already going at more than four an over.Kuldeep had learned the evening before that he was part of India’s 12-man shortlist, and on the morning of the match that he would be playing. He was replacing India’s captain in a swap that wasn’t like for like. He was the extra bowler playing at the expense of a sixth specialist batsman, and he would have to justify not just his inclusion but the change in the team’s composition as well. Given Australia’s situation when he came on, Kuldeep had to be on the money straightaway.”We planned about the next session during lunch time,” Kuldeep later said. “The plan was to not give them more than 70 to 80 runs. Not much [was discussed] about number of wickets we intended to take. Obviously, if you are giving away only 80 runs you are bound to get wickets. [I] followed plans as per team management’s demands.”He certainly seemed to. Kuldeep did not bowl a full toss – apart from when Shaun Marsh or Handscomb stepped out and met his deliveries on the full – or a long-hop all day, and when he did err, it was almost always on the fuller side.His pitch map, in the end, didn’t look a whole lot different to Ravindra Jadeja’s in terms of length, just a broader spread, consistent with the greater margin for error afforded to a bigger turner of the ball. In terms of line, though, it was even more stump to stump, reflecting his predominantly left-arm over angle to the right-hand batsmen, which allowed him to land both his stock ball and his googly in roughly the same area.This presented Australia’s batsmen a problem they hadn’t faced all series. Two kinds of deliveries, turning in opposite directions from roughly the same area, one threatening the inside edge and the other the outside edge, both of which could conceivably hit their stumps.All through the series, Australia’s batsmen have spoken about playing for the one that attacks the inside edge and threatens lbw and bowled, and not worrying too much if their outside edge was beaten. They could do that with Jadeja. They could do that with R Ashwin. Those two had to produce an absolute peach to beat the outside edge and still hit the stumps. With Kuldeep, it was a little different.Kuldeep’s left-arm over angle to right-handers allows him to land both his stock ball and the googly in roughly the same spot•ESPNcricinfo LtdIt made for an excellent package: consistent lines and lengths, deceptive trajectory, turn in both directions. For Kuldeep to put it all together demanded a great deal of composure – he was playing on a stage he had never been part of before – and belief in his own ability. He certainly seemed like a man full of confidence at the end of the day’s play, during his first press conference as a Test cricketer.He referenced his dismissal of David Warner when asked about his interactions with Shane Warne.”Did you see the first wicket?” Kuldeep asked. “That wasn’t a chinaman. It was a flipper which I learnt from Shane Warne.”So learning from Warne and then dismissing one of his [Australia’s] players is great. My idol was Warne and I have followed him since childhood. I still watch his videos and it was a dream come true when I met him. I couldn’t believe I was speaking to my idol and sharing my thoughts on bowling and what all I should be doing.”I did exactly what he told me to do. He has promised that he will have another session with me in the near future.”Was that wicket really a flipper? Flippers tend to go straight on and skid, staying a touch lower than expected. Warner was instead defeated by extra bounce. It would be just like Warne, though, to call a non-flipper a flipper and make batsmen hurry back to the video analyst.When asked about bowling to Steven Smith, who made his third hundred of the series on Saturday, Kuldeep was matter-of-fact.”Actually, I was bowling to Smith for the first time, and I didn’t have any difficulty as he wasn’t playing any shots against me,” he said. “Maybe he didn’t want to take any chance against me and was depending on singles. Maybe since wickets were falling at the other end, he was being cautious.”I was never nervous against Smith. From childhood, I have been told that a spinner should take wickets even if he gets hit. My theory remains the same.”Then someone asked him which of his wickets he prized the most.”All four are precious but the first one was very special. The next two [Handscomb and Maxwell] were satisfying, as I got them exactly how I had visualised their dismissals.”He surely cannot have visualised bowling Handscomb through the gate or squaring up Maxwell with a googly. Maybe he did. Or maybe it was all just , something he picked up from all the Warne videos he has watched. We may yet come to see and hear more of it from this confident young leggie in the mirror.
