Forever the backup to Ashwin & Jadeja, the much-improved spinner will be expecting to get a go on the expected slow turner at Green Park, his home ground. Kanpur’s favourite cricketer, though, has learnt to embrace the constant uncertainty over his spot in the XI.
KANPUR: On a hot and draining Wednesday afternoon, local boy Kuldeep Yadav was one of the last players to emerge from the Indian dressing room for practice.Even from a distance, one could sense he was feeling at home, two days ahead of the second Test against Bangladesh.
The Green Park Stadium has been Kuldeep’s hunting ground from his formative years. He is one of the biggest cricketers to have emerged from Kanpur.
It’s worth highlighting that Kuldeep made his Test debut seven and a half years ago. He has also succeeded in retaining the element of mystery in his left-arm wrist spin. Yet, he is just 12 Test matches old, which is a bigger mystery. A return of 53 wickets at an average of 21.05, including four five-wicket hauls and three four-wicket hauls in these 12 matches, are impressive returns which can give even the best a run for their money.
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Instead, Kuldeep has forever been India’s backup spinner. He has probably made peace with it. He has gone through more nets sessions than actual game time. Kuldeep’s initiation in Test cricket coincided with the growing legend of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
Despite a stellar England series at home earlier this year, the team management could not find a place for him in the XI in the first Test against Bangladesh in Chennai, where the pitch had more in it for the seam bowlers.
During a freewheeling chat with the media at the team hotel in the middle of the IPL earlier this year, Kuldeep had said that a few years ago, he had become egoistic and rigid towards change, which resulted in him losing form.
Now, a few months shy of turning 30 and immune from such insecurities, he believes he has learnt to embrace the fact that he will forever be in competition with other spinners in India. “There will always be competition among spinners in India, irrespective of the format. There will always be four spinners ready to take the field. Now, I focus on continuously bettering myself and being ready to pounce on the opportunity when it comes,” Kuldeep would say.
“When I was struggling at Kolkata Knight Riders four-five years ago, I needed a lot of guidance. Now I feel I don’t need anyone to guide me all the time,” he had said.
Bangladesh coach Chandrika Hathurusinghe was emphatic in mentioning that India weren’t offering turners since his team has three potent spinners. But the Test starting here on Friday could be different.
With a history of being a low and slow-spinning surface, the black soil here could still offer a little more kick for the spinners. Never mind the groundsmen sprinkling water over the pitch, with captain Rohit Sharma and coach Gautam Gambhir hovering over the centre square.
That the Indian team management had expressed major reservations to the BCCI against playing in Kanpur is a discussion for another day. India seamer Akash Deep reckoned that they needed to wait another day to see how much the pitch dries up before assuming how the surface would play during the Test.
Kuldeep Yadav (ANI Photo)
Will this be the best chance to play Kuldeep irrespective of the possibility of overcast conditions during the first three days of the Test? Kuldeep himself is now used to such uncertainty.
In fact, he has aced the waiting game. And that led him to shed his ego, change his run-up and the load-up in his delivery stride, allowing him to impart more pace on the ball.
“It was tough to change something that you have been doing for 15 years. There were doubts when I was coming back from injury and going through these changes a couple of years back. I was not sure how it would turn out. But I decided to give myself more time to perfect it and then come back,” Kuldeep had said.
The patience started bearing fruit and soon he reclaimed his position as India’s lead white-ball spinner last year, before that magical England series happened on flat decks in India this year. As he intended to, he did pounce on the opportunity.
That series also saw him a bit steadier with the bat down the order — a feature of his game which had made him fall behind fellow spinners Ashwin, Jadeja and even Axar Patel. That’s why one saw him go through a rather long intense batting session along with the other spinners on Wednesday afternoon, two days before the Test.
Off the top of the head, it would be a struggle to recall when Kuldeep last turned up for a Test match and had no impact on the game. That’s why, for his adoring home crowd, this wait to know whether he will play could be agonizing.