Kuldeep Yadav is the nightmare that keeps recurring to Pakistan batsmen. The latest–three wickets for 18 runs in Dubai–reflected as much as his grip over the batsmen from Pakistan as his evolution from a magical to masterful spinner. It was his first T20I against the neighbours, but his white-ball figures against the neighbours read are dread-inducing. Eight games; eighteen wickets, 10 runs for a wicket, an economy rate of 4.2. He has not just confused the batch of Salman Ali Agha, but also the more famous ones of a past Pakistan is trying to erase.
He is like a myth, different batsmen would have different versions of stories to tell and retell. Babar Azam, the finest Pakistan batsman since Younis Khan, would remember two balls that shocked him into numbness. First was the googly in the Asia Cup in Dubai 2018, those days when Kuldeep relied on slow deception in air and biting turn off the surface. Babar had shimmied down the track to flick, seemed to have gauged the flight and dip but to his horror realised that he was nowhere near the pitch off the ball, and with bewildered eyes, saw the ball spat past his bat to kick the stumps. He was expecting his stock ball, the one that turns in.
A year later in a World Cup game in Manchester, Babar was so spooked of the googly that he was largely crease-bound. He was inclined to get outside the line with a slightly open bat face. But this time, Kuldeep spun the ball back into him after drifting it away. In the flight the ball was heading towards the fifth stump, but the deathly reroute saw it hit the off and middle-stump. A piece of magnificent wrist spin. He twinkled with the joy of a street magician.
Trick after trick, Pakistan fell for Kuldeep’s magic show 🪄
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The successors of Babar would wonder what the fuss about his turn is all about. For in Sunday’s game, he barely spun the ball to eye-popping degrees. The turn, either way, was subtle. Photographs of none of the three wickets would do his walls, but that’s how Kuldeep operates in the shorter versions these days. He has metamorphosed into a master of subtle arts of spin bowling, shedding the spectacular acts that captured the first half of his career. He spins the ball just enough to lure the edge, the dip just enough for the batsmen to misjudge his stroke. The ball hangs in the air just enough to trigger confusion. Heart of it is his mastery of different lengths, his clever interchanging of it, and speed.
The Babar wonder-ball clocked only 78mph; the one that nailed Mohammad Nawaz measured 84 kph. The wickets of Sahibzada Farhan and Hasan Nawaz, too, nudged similar speeds. It’s not that Kuldeep has learned to bowl fast, but how efficiently he varies his pace-range, without compromising on foundation ideals of flight and drop. He has, thus, woven another layer of intrigue to his artistry. Primarily, the drop deceived Farhan, as he stretched for the ball to reach him only to find it was eluding him. He played the stroke prematurely. Mohammed Nawaz did not fathom the googly; he misjudged the length too. It was not a ball in sweep-able length, but it is also about the illusion that he creates that the shot was on. Hasan Nawaz perished miscuing the slog-sweep, beaten by the bounce he extracted from a good length-ish area.
Merely watching the wicket-balls–a spinner is best appreciated as a whole package–would capture his full art. He kept them guessing, second-guessing, pre-empting and wafting the thin air. He had Farhan tied on a knot. He mustered only two runs from six balls, despite all his jailbreak measures. They couldn’t dance down the track because he would fox them with flight and dip. They couldn’t sweep him because he made the ball bounce off the length (thanks to the revvs he imparts). They couldn’t cut as there was no width. Due to his lengths, batsmen cannot premeditate going to either front or back foot. “Once you have settled into a good length, you keep changing the line by reading the batsman. If you can do that, the format isn’t that difficult for a bowler,” he had told The Indian Express. His mantra was to “read the batsman’s mind”. “Try to see what he expects you to bowl next and what shot he can try.”
Reliving every moment of an epic night 🎥 🤩
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And Pakistan batsmen did not quite have the skill or courage to disrupt a high-class spinner. Frightened, they could not even manipulate singles. He piled on 15 dot balls, that is close to two-thirds of his deliveries went unscored.
Former captain Shoaib Malik pinned the blame on Pakistan’s lack of planning. “We don’t play them at bilateral and we only play them at such ICC tournaments. Which means nobody has found a solution as yet to play him (in the space of 10 matches, spread over years)? Nobody is even bothered about it? Then what we are doing. What kind of planning and cricket is this? If a guy is coming and taking wickets everyday against us, we don’t have any solution?”. His co-panelist at PTV Sports Umar Gul wondered even with the presence of a similar left-arm wrist spinner in their own ranks, why were the Pakistani batsmen looking so clueless against Kuldeep.
He keeps reinventing, which is an occupational hazard of sorts in this era of forensic examination by technology. The more they play him, the better they should become at spotting the idiosyncrasies that give clues as to which way the ball is going to turn. The catalogue of footage will be built. “I still think I need to really work on my bowling as well. Sometimes I feel that I try too many variations, but I have to learn day by day and game by game. I still think there’s a lot of room to improve in,” he told the host broadcasters during the presentation ceremony. So he is filling more layers to his craft, perpetually thinking ahead of the batsman, like a thought-fox, plotting, planning, chiselling his weapons. And recurring as a nightmare for Pakistan.
