His nine overs included the full range of his skills that have made him the best at what he does
Andrew Fidel Fernando23-Feb-20251:10
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Every time Kuldeep Yadav plays a major tournament, there is something new, something fresh, some bold new facet to his bowling. He is a wristspinner that deals to some extent in mystery (his is a pretty good googly), so the natural inclination is to think there must be a tricksy new delivery in his locker.You remember Shane Warne’s bottomless bag of goodies, right? Often, when a big series rolled around, he’d shimmy up to some cameras, tell the world with a wink and a naughty grin that he’d been working on a legbreak that could pitch on Venus and hit a set of stumps on Mars, or that there was a never-before-seen “zooter”, and oh, there are 17 new versions of the flipper as well.Kuldeep’s improvements are not those kinds of improvements. Wristspin is frequently described as the closest thing that cricket has to art, which is fitting, because no other cricketing discipline tiptoes upon that flimsy wall between genius and fragility quite so teeteringly. Warne was Exhibit A.Related
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But with Kuldeep it feels more like craft. He is a carpenter whittling a new design on a headboard. A stonemason squaring up a perfect 90-degree corner. Maybe this is part modern-day wristspin, which overwhelmingly flourishes more in the cut-and-thrust white-ball cricket world, than in the red-ball one. But partly, it’s just Kuldeep’s own bowling.Watch his fingers as they roll over the ball, especially when the broadcast shows the slow-motion replays. Sometimes the fingers are pointing towards short third. Sometimes they are flush in line with the stumps. Sometimes they point towards where a leg slip might stand. At other times they come out of the very back of the hand. The seam is in varying degrees of scramble. For Kuldeep, wristspin is a spectrum, and he treads many of its latitudes. He also varies the pace, but that is the most boring observation. All the really good spinners do that.In evidence against Pakistan was all of this. If we are being critical of Pakistan’s batters, which perhaps we should be given their wholesale unambition, they allowed Kuldeep to settle in, bowl how he wanted, and basically make the middle and early-death overs a little Kuldeep Yadav party. The lengths were immaculate, the lines were pristine, and no one was trying to hit him off this weirdly blank canvas. And Kuldeep painted a picture to his liking.Through the match, he bowled 54 balls, and was hit for three fours, two by Saud Shakeel, who swept him hard in his fifth over (one reverse, one regular). The final figures were 3 for 40. Within those 54 balls, though, were notched so many of the positions on the Kuldeep spectrum. For nerds of spin bowling, these are rare and glorious delights.We’ll do the basic thing and clock how his three wickets came: Salman Agha ran at an overspun Kuldeep ball in the 43rd over and tried to flick him to leg, but ended up leading-edging him into the off-side infield where Ravindra Jadeja took a nice catch. The very next ball, he slid a fast one into the pads of Shaheen Afridi, who reviewed immediately although it was very, very obviously a plumb lbw. In the 47th over, he had Naseem Shah caught somewhere between mid-on and long-on, as Pakistan were looking to crank the throttle.But there were joys way beyond this. This was the kind of day in which you had wished you could watch Kuldeep from side-on, because the pace, the loop, the dip, and the balls that float at the batter, and then leap at them off the surface – these are all best appreciated from the stands just beyond deep midwicket or deep cover, and Kuldeep was rocking all of this stuff, as Pakistan’s batters settled into their stasis.When you watch great spinners from front on (as we all do on cricket broadcasts), a lot of what you tend to rate is sidespin. When you watch it from the side, you realise how much spin bowling – modern white-ball spin bowling in particular – is about trajectory. And Kuldeep is now into an era in which he is becoming a bona-fide master of this craft.Kuldeep Yadav’s impact ensured there was no late flourish from Pakistan•AFP/Getty ImagesThe funnest balls are the ones that hover in the first two thirds of the journey, then dip, and rush into the batter off the surface. To borrow a line from one of the very greatest and most-inspiring sportspeople of all time, Kuldeep makes ’em float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.He didn’t have to do it against Pakistan, because the Pakistan batting performance was largely bereft of bravery. But one of Kuldeep’s huge new strengths is that when he is being attacked, he knows how to get out of a bad over. It is difficult to overstate how vital it is for modern-day wristspinners to have the mettle, skill, and nous to close out overs where a boundary has been hit early, and either they don’t have the match-up, or the batter is playing exceptionally well.Kuldeep is increasingly adept at sensing this bad air. An under-threat Kuldeep visibly rushes through the back end of the over, because in those situations giving a batter time to plan their next move is giving up an advantage. Like a man who rolls up to a dodgy party and feels that something bad is about to go down, Kuldeep blows the joint almost before the batter realises. He has vanished into thin air.
Kuldeep is stretching the boundaries of the sport, and the only reason we don’t focus on this pathbreaking is because he has normalised excellence in a field we have forgotten is extremely thin on practitioners
Since 2023, his economy rate in ODIs has been 4.50 (the average is also a rocking 22.06 if you’re wondering, but that’s not the point we are making here). Among spinners who have bowled at the death in at least 50 innings since 2017 – when Kuldeep debuted – only Rashid Khan has a better economy rate after the 40th over than Kuldeep’s 6.04. Rashid tends to play more lower-ranked opposition than India do.Kuldeep is one of the rare spinners who has got that stage of the innings figured out. About bowling after the 40th against Pakistan – a phase in which his returns were three wickets for 17 runs in four overs – Kuldeep had this to say: “The plan was very simple, you know. Especially, on a wicket like this, you tend to become the first choice in bowling the last ten overs. And I felt that even the captain felt that it’s very difficult to hit against spinners when you have variations. So luckily, it was good for me.”The wicket was slow. I was trying to mix with the pace and wrong’uns or top spin. If you get a couple of wickets in the middle, then batsmen tend to block you. That’s what they did in the last ten overs. And the captain told me straightaway, ‘I want wickets. If you can get me couple of wickets, that’ll be good’.”Kuldeep Yadav returned 3 for 17 runs in four overs after the 40th over•AFP/Getty ImagesLong before this phase, Kuldeep was anyway the greatest left-arm wristspin bowler that has ever existed. Sri Lanka’s Lakshan Sandakan was just alright. Tabraiz Shamsi, who is in this Champions Trophy, is pretty good, but not often operating on Kuldeep levels.Kuldeep is stretching the boundaries of the sport, and the only reason we don’t focus on this pathbreaking is because he has normalised excellence in a field he makes us forget is extremely thin on practitioners.A left-arm wristspinner playing international cricket is one thing. A left-arm wristspinner becoming one of the most dependable ODI death bowlers in the world? Get outta here. Ten years ago, even the idea would have been ludicrous.
