It was a lovely little exchange between R Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav when the former picked his fourth wicket to bundle out England for 218. Kuldeep had taken five but wanted his senior teammate, playing his 100th Test, to keep the ball as a souvenir. Ashwin didn’t agree and gave it back to Kuldeep who tried giving it back but was asked to keep the ball and lead the side out of the park. There was applause from the teammates, dressing room and the stands as Kuldeep led the side out after what was a magical spell of chinaman bowling.
At the venue where his Test journey got underway back in 2017 vs Australia, Kuldeep picked his fourth fifer in the format and also became the fastest Indian to 50 Test wickets. Since making his debut seven years ago, the left-armer has played only 10 Tests and the ongoing Dharamsala fixture was only his 12th outing in the whites. In the same duration, India played as many as 66 Tests but Kuldeep mostly remained out of contention. Even when India played a third spinner, the management went ahead with Axar Patel to add depth to the batting.
All this while, the 29-year-old spent a lot of time on his bowling, batting and fitness to return stronger, sharper and with a lot of bite. The way he has been bowling in the ongoing series, especially that spell on the third morning of the Rajkot Test, a big haul was on the cards. He was beating the batters in the air, off the pitch and kept them guessing with subtle use of variations. When Plan A wouldn’t work, he would switch to Plan B and never became too predictable.
But it’s highly unlikely that even he would have thought that his first fifer of the series would come on the opening day of the fifth Test. The pitch was a used one but the last match played here was more than a month ago and the conditions above weren’t tailor-made for spin bowling. But like every quality spinner, Kuldeep didn’t rely on the surface and unzipped his bag of tricks to trap the visitors in a spin-web.
He outsmarted Ben Duckett, beat Ollie Pope with the one which goes the other way, used a combination of drift and turn to castle Zak Crawley, stuck to his plan vs Bairstow and made Ben Stokes his bunny again. All five wickets showed how much he has grown and evolved as a spinner. He figured that this pitch wasn’t going to offer turn which surfaces for the previous three Tests did and was proactive to vary his pace accordingly. There seemed a cautious effort to slow the pace up a bit in search of more turn and the mean drift kept the batters clueless.
On the eve of the match, Rohit said Kuldeep has been a different bowler since his return from injury and the effort he is putting is showing on the field.
“Kuldeep in the last two years, he has been bowling differently. Even in white-ball cricket, since he has come back from his knee injury, he seems to be a different bowler. There’s a bit of bite in his bowling, a bit of drift, he’s putting so much effort into his bowling, into his rhythm and everything. He’s changed a lot of things after he’s come back from his injury, which is what you see differently now in this last 2-3 years that he has played,” said Rohit.
There have been numerous occasions in the past where Kuldeep had lost out to Axar for the third spinner spot and Rohit insisted it was a move to add some batting depth on challenging pitches. The skipper was quick to highlight Kuldeep’s improvement as a batter and the crucial knocks he has played in the series so far.
“Kuldeep has shown that he’s got batting ability as well in the last couple of innings he’s played for us. He’s shown that he can not just hold the bat, but do a lot more than that. And he played a crucial knock in the Ranchi Test match with Dhruv. That partnership was a match-winning partnership in my eyes with Dhruv getting 90 and Kuldeep getting 30-odd, which got us very close to their first-innings target. I think that was the changing point,” said Rohit.
Not long ago, back in 2019, then India coach Ravi Shastri had said Kuldeep Yadav was going to be India’s No.1 spinner in overseas Tests. Since then, the spinner has played just five Tests – all at home – and didn’t feature in the 24 away fixtures India have played. Whether that’s going to change soon remains to be seen but one thing is for sure, consistent game time is aiding his growth and evolution as a spinner, and giving India a new match-winner in the whites.
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