“I really don’t know what happened with Anshul. It was like he froze.”
Satish Rana has asked his pupil the same question many times since last July. Soon after the Test. Weeks after Anshul Kamboj returned to Karnal. The answer has never changed.
He didn’t know why he bowled the way he did. He didn’t feel pressure. There were no fitness issues. No warning signs. But whatever the reason, he simply couldn’t bowl in that Test.
Kamboj had flown to Manchester as a replacement, seen by India’s think-tank as a seamer suited to English conditions — someone who could operate in the mid-130s, touch 140, and move the ball both ways. What India got instead was a bowler who ambled in at 125kph, almost anonymous in a match that demanded more from him.
Nobody had an explanation. Not the support staff. Not captain Shubman Gill. Not Rana. Not even Kamboj himself.
“I’ve been coaching him since childhood and I’ve never seen him have a day like that,” Rana says. “It was new not just for him, but for me. If he had erred in line or length, I could help him. But this was different.”
So they did the only thing they could.
They left it behind. And went back to work.
***
The run-up was the first thing.
When Rana watched the footage from Manchester, he noticed Kamboj was out of rhythm from the moment he turned at the top of his mark. The loading was off. Everything that followed flowed from that imbalance.
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There was no overhaul. No urge to reinvent him. They shortened the run-up by a couple of yards — just enough to restore the rhythm. Then came the fitness work. Then the long evenings.
Before the IPL, Kamboj wanted one thing: purposeful repetition. So he bowled for hours at a single idea — yorker length. From wide outside off stump to the base of the stumps, the line changed, the target shifted, but the length stayed constant.
“Before leaving for IPL, he wanted to do target bowling,” Rana says. “For hours he did spot bowling, targeting the yorker length. From wide of the off-stump to the stumps, he would keep altering his line, but the length was the same.”
The Ranji Trophy season did not announce a revival. Five matches. Thirteen wickets. Useful returns, but not attention-grabbing ones.
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But this phase was never about numbers. The real work was happening elsewhere — mornings in fitness sessions, evenings in repetition-heavy spells. The wickets could wait. Rhythm couldn’t.
What emerged was not just form. It was clarity. He was no longer just a bowler with a role. He was becoming a bowler with options — and the control to use them.
***
It returned quietly. Then unmistakably.
Kamboj is now the joint-highest wicket-taker for Chennai Super Kings this IPL season, with 10 wickets. He is consistently above 135kph, with 141kph his quickest. But the more interesting shift is not the pace. It is the responsibility.
Once a new-ball option, Kamboj has been trusted at the death alongside Jamie Overton, a bowler who can touch 150kph. Kamboj does not have that speed. What he has is harder to produce.
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From around the stumps, he angles in wide yorkers that leave batters reaching, stretching, and missing. It is a method with almost no margin for error, executed at the most unforgiving stage of a T20 innings — when batters are swinging hardest and mistakes travel furthest.
Apart from an expensive outing against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, he has been both economical and effective in a role not originally his.
“One of the things that’s very important for a bowler is clarity around his game plan,” CSK bowling consultant Eric Simons said. “He’s got very good clarity. When he practises, he practises exactly what he’s going to do — bowl around the wicket, bowl wide yorkers, create angles, hit areas. He’s been very good at it. It started last year. He’s done it in domestic cricket, got better, and come back.”
And it isn’t just at the death. In the powerplay, Kamboj has shown he can pull his length back and hit hard lengths that are difficult to get away. That adjustment brought him the early wicket of Finn Allen on Tuesday — a reminder that he is no longer confined to one phase.
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Which is what makes Manchester still so strange. Last July, Anshul Kamboj bowled at 125kph and nobody — not his captain, not his coach, not even Kamboj himself — could explain why.
“We just saw it as a bad day,” Rana says.
They never found the answer. What they found was the bowler again.
