With India missing Ashwin and the series delicately poised, Kuldeep stood up and turned the tables around England
Karthik Krishnaswamy17-Feb-2024What’s your favourite type of wicket? Bowled through the gate? Turn past the outside edge to hit top of off? Three outswingers followed by the inswinger into the pads? The corridor lifter edged into second slip’s reverse-cupped hands? Bouncer fended to gully? Flipper flooring the stumps?Whatever your answer is, it’s unlikely to be rank long-hop, wide outside off stump, ballooning off the toe end to cover. Kuldeep Yadav will end his career with hundreds of wickets more aesthetically pleasing than the one of Ben Duckett on Saturday, but there probably won’t be too many that will have left him feeling so satisfied, relieved and vindicated at the same time.All wickets count the same on the scorecard, but if there’s such a thing as a better wicket, Kuldeep perhaps deserved it, given the context of the mesmeric spell of wristspin that produced it. But at the same time, it was perhaps the perfect way for Kuldeep to dismiss Duckett. A Bazball wicket to end a Bazball innings.Related
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On the second morning of the Rajkot Test, Kuldeep bowled six overs and conceded 42 runs, 29 of them to a marauding Duckett in just 16 balls. Six of those 16 balls went to the boundary, but only one, or perhaps two, of them came off what you might term a genuinely bad ball. When he was taken out of the attack, it was hard to say if Kuldeep had bowled well or badly. The truth lay somewhere in between, probably, but bowlers don’t usually go at seven an over in the course of somewhere-in-between spells in Test cricket.Such are the accelerated rhythms of Bazball. The outcome of Kuldeep’s spell left Rohit Sharma, India’s captain, open to a torrent of criticism. He had brought Kuldeep on as first change, in the sixth over of England’s innings, ahead of R Ashwin. He had done this when anyone with a passing knowledge of Indian cricket could tell you how good Ashwin is when, a: the ball is new, b: he’s bowling to left-hand batters, and c: he’s bowling to Ben Duckett.Before this match, Ashwin had bowled 83 balls to Duckett in Test cricket, conceded 37 runs, and dismissed him five times. That’s an average of 7.40.It was to Kuldeep that Rohit turned first, however, and by the time day two was done, Duckett was batting on 133 off 118 balls, and England, replying to India’s 445, were 202 for 2 in 35 overs.The match was still in the balance in scorecard terms, even if it didn’t quite feel that way to the viewer, but by the time day three dawned, it seemed like straw-clutching even to say this, if you were an India fan. Ashwin had withdrawn from the match for personal reasons, leaving India without an all-time great with 500 Test wickets, and their biggest match-winner at home for over a decade.This had happened before the middle day of the middle Test of a series locked 1-1. Whichever way it went, it felt like this would be a day of tectonic shifts.Kuldeep roars after removing Jonny Bairstow for a duck•Getty ImagesIndia began the day with Jasprit Bumrah from one end, and Kuldeep from the other. Anyone watching this series knew what they would get from Bumrah. No matter what happened at the other end, he would force England to respect him if not fear him outright.But Kuldeep? This was a bowler with three five-wicket hauls and an average of 22.73 before this game, but also one playing just his tenth Test match in eight years. This was a bowler bigged up by his coach as India’s No. 1 overseas spinner after his first Australia tour, but also one who didn’t get off the bench on India’s next tour of that country, even though half their side was out injured by the time the last Test began. This was a vastly improved white-ball bowler, zippier off the pitch and more resilient, but also one who hadn’t really been tested in Test cricket since he had made those improvements.What could we expect, then, in this fraught match and series situation, from this lavishly gifted, sort of experienced but not really, somewhat proven yet somewhat unfulfilled 29-year-old container of multitudes?What we could expect, it turns out, was 12 overs unbroken, from the start of day three until two overs before lunch, and two wickets for the cost of 35 runs. In the context of all the Bazballing that had come before, against Kuldeep and every other India bowler, the 35 runs in 12 overs were as remarkable as the two wickets. That’s a fraction less than three an over. And he did this even though he bowled 17 balls to Duckett, who, to refresh your memory, had taken him for 29 off 16 on the second evening.Over that 12-over spell, it became amply clear why Rohit had thrown Kuldeep the ball six overs into England’s innings. Throwing it to Ashwin would have been an excellent move too, but only one bowler can bowl at any given time.And Kuldeep can bowl, oh yes.He wasn’t at his best, perhaps, on Friday evening – and wasn’t allowed to be by Duckett – but the margins were pretty small. A bowler usually has two responses to a batter who sweeps frequently: go stump-to-stump and full and look for lbw, or go wider and force the batter to drag the sweep from outside off stump and, in Kuldeep’s case, against the turn. Kuldeep went for the first option on day two, and it may well have been the more attacking option, keeping more modes of dismissal in play. But he was perhaps a touch too straight on occasion, drifting down leg, and by aiming to bowl the quick lbw ball was perhaps sacrificing one of his best attributes – his loop.On day three he went wider, with more protection on the leg-side boundary. According to ESPNcricinfo’s data, he pitched 11 of his 17 balls outside Duckett’s off stump, having done so only twice in 16 balls in his first spell. While he varied his pace constantly, Kuldeep also seemed to bowl with more overspin in general, getting the ball up above the batter’s eyeline, willing it to dip and bounce a little more and threaten the top edge if Duckett tried to sweep.The moment the series potentially turned? Saturday felt like a day of tectonic shifts•Getty ImagesAt the end of the day’s play, Duckett played down any discomfort Kuldeep’s altered plans may have caused him.”No, I didn’t find it more challenging,” he said. “They just had everyone on the boundary. I played a couple of sweeps but when he’s bowling with a deep backward point, a cow corner and a deep square with no one round the bat, I felt like I could knock singles until I hit one that was close to being a wide straight to cover.”From India’s perspective, however, putting Duckett off the sweep was a win because it allowed Kuldeep to keep landing the ball in that good-length area outside off stump, where – particularly if you were bowling from the Media Box End – a clump of footmarks had begun to develop. And Duckett didn’t just keep knocking singles. He began, in fact, to look just a little uncertain. One ball turned and bounced past a defensive prod, one skidded under an attempted slap-drive, and one found the edge as Duckett went low to reverse-sweep. Rohit Sharma, stretching to his limit at slip, got a fingertip to it but no more.By this time India had already broken through twice. Bumrah, and the memory of eight previous dismissals to him, coaxed Root into a reverse-scoop that didn’t quite come off. Then Kuldeep had made a mood-altering incision, slanting one across Jonny Bairstow and getting it to rip back and trap him on the crease; the batter had played for the slightly flatter trajectory rather than the fuller-side-of-good length, and gone fatally onto the back foot. And as is usually the case nowadays, there was too much zip off the track for the batter to adjust.The arrival of Ben Stokes showed just how much Kuldeep was now beginning to do with the footmarks outside the left-handers’ off stump. He has a wrong’un that’s both deceptive and potent off the track, but he tends to use it sparingly; perhaps sensing that Stokes wasn’t picking him, he bowled it twice, and beat him twice on the inside edge when he tried to defend, on the second occasion ending up with his hands on his head as extra bounce denied him a clean-bowled.India would have dearly loved to have Ashwin around to add to England’s torment, but there was an unexpected benefit to his absence: their other four bowlers were having to bowl long spells. Bumrah’s morning spell lasted seven overs; Ravindra Jadeja bowled one of six overs – it could have been longer had England not been bowled out – starting just before lunch; and Siraj ran through England’s lower order in a spell of 11.1 overs.
“Kuldeep doesn’t put quite as many revs on the ball as Warne did, and he’s still some way short of being as accurate. But he spins the ball as hard as anyone currently in the game, which results not just in turn off the pitch but in drift and dip before it gets there”
Longer spells can take a lot out of you, but they can also help you get into serious rhythm if the ball is coming out right. As Kuldeep wheeled away over his 12-over allotment, he seemed to keep landing the ball exactly where he wanted it to, after it traced the precise arc he had visualised at the top of his mark. Most wristspinners spend their careers agonising over the trade-off between giving the ball a rip and landing it where they want to, and Shane Warne was so freakishly good because he did both, time after time, while constantly playing with angles and wrist position.Kuldeep doesn’t put quite as many revs on the ball as Warne did, and he’s still some way short of being as accurate. But he spins the ball as hard as anyone currently in the game, which results not just in turn off the pitch but in drift and dip before it gets there. And he’s as accurate as you can realistically expect a wristspinner to be.He almost got through that 12-over morning spell, for instance, without bowling a long-hop. But on this day, almost was an excellent outcome, as he ended Duckett’s innings with one of the worst balls he’s bowled in any form of cricket.It was Kuldeep’s 40th Test wicket, and he hasn’t yet finished his 10th Test match. At the time of writing, his wickets have come at an average of 23.52. Of the 10 wristspinners who’ve taken at least 40 wickets since Warne’s retirement, no one has a better average than Kuldeep. No one else, in fact, averages less than 30, with the next-best on the list, Yasir Shah, picking up his 244 wickets at 31.38.It’s incredible for Kuldeep to have that record given how stop-start his Test career has been so far. There’s no guarantee that this will change in the immediate future, given that R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja still have miles in the tank and that Axar Patel and Washington Sundar bring so much all-round value. But Saturday’s spell was evidence that Kuldeep has the skill to break games open in good batting conditions, against strong line-ups that are willing to attack him. That sort of skill is rare and invaluable. Watching it, you may have had the sense that Kuldeep’s Test future may be a lot more about start than stop.