A series that began on a catastrophic tone, an embarrassing statistical millstone, a frank admission of his listlessness, and the tedium on the bench, has ended on a redemptive note for Prasidh Krishna. Until the last five days of the long and arduous tour, he was the answer to the pub-side trivia. A) Who is the first bowler in Test cricket to bleed more than run a ball in both innings? B) Who owns the highest match economy for an India Test bowler? The heartless meme-troll world celebrated the failure of Prasidh.
His could be fodder to cruel humour until someone emerges with more disfigured numbers, but the last five days of tour would have felt like liberation, an unburdening of all the accumulated angst and doubts. Bouquets would be showered on Mohammed Siraj, confetti popped on Shubman Gill and maybe a fizz of champagne splashed on Gautam Gambhir. But Prasidh could reflect satisfactorily on the spirited support shift, a haul of eight-fer, he put on in Oval, the match-defining wickets as well as take the learnings from his longest streak of Tests. The toil could at least buy him a few more Tests.
He has rough edges. Like several tall bowlers, he is prone to bowling too short too often. It is a paradox, when the greatest gift is also the biggest enemy. Height, and the discomfiting bounce he could generate, can make batting an ordeal. But the failure to harness his ferocious strength, that is by erring on the shorter side, on flat and modestly fast England decks, and over-compensation in the form of half-volleys, can bleed a torrent of boundaries. He leaked 69 fours and eight sixes, that is nearly one of eight balls. Like the first ball he bowled on the fifth day, a short-ball filth that Jamie Overton slugged to the fence. He is not the first tall bowler who has experienced this frustration. His own bowling struggled to direct the venom of his bounce at the start; as did his predecessor Ishant Sharma.
But throughout the carnage of runs plundered, he also illustrated the reason the team management has invested in him, those that once made Virat Kohli tweet about his “X factor”. Whenever he bowled a yard fuller, he not only purchased movement, but also extra lift and skid. Jamie Smith would confess. He tried to crunch him on the rise, rose with the height of the ball, but still could not ride the bounce and ended up missing the ball altogether. And not to forget he might have killed the contest pretty early on day 4 itself when he had Harry Brook heaving to long-leg where Siraj fluffed it. A shorter, but not quite a rank-short one, ball hurried into Zak Crawley’s pull in the first innings at Oval. It was only a few centimetres, but the impact was markedly different, and vicious.
The India vs England series has ended on a redemptive note for Prasidh Krishna. (AP)
If only he could hit the hard, or even veer onto the good-length band, he would be a deadlier proposition.
When he hits that length, batsmen become wary of driving him and so even when the ball is there to be driven they often fail to get fully forward, bringing the edge into play. They are caught in a dilemma, as Jamie Smith was in the first innings, square-driving a ball that bounced more than he had judged, and Joe Root in the second innings when he tried to glide the ball past gully but with static feet and heavy hands, unusual of England’s talisman. A trifle fuller, he nips the ball devilishly into the right-hander. Then tall seamers tend to avoid the fuller length, because they risk floating the ball up when striving to bowl fuller.
How he balances his virtues and cracks the consistency code would determine his career, whether the Oval sizzle was an aberration or the sign of a genuine upturn in his graph. A tall bowler who could coax bounce would be an invaluable commodity, irrespective of conditions. If he could fuse bounce with seam movement both ways, he could be an even precious jewel. Among India’s seamers, he has the highest release point, he generates the steepest bounce, is fairly quick, and can bowl long spells. The height is the difference between one bowler hitting the middle of the bat, and him jarring the splice from the same length. Trajectory apart, they create the illusion of bowling shorter than they really do.
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But he is 29, not young any more, an age when bowlers mature and peak, patience would soon wear thin. But if he is groomed smartly and his frame does not wilt, he could enjoy a late spring like Ishant enjoyed towards the tail-end of his career.
As much as the gifts of his physique, the strength of his mind too stands out. Few bowlers recover from the spate of injuries, from stress fractures to quadricep tears, he had suffered in the last few years, just when he seemed ready for Test cricket. Months of rehab cost his game that could have developed him into a rounded, worldly-wise operator. Fewer still would have recovered from bashings in the first Test, the crude humour on social media and still made a decisive impact in squaring the series.
In Oval, too, there were times he was hideously erratic, when the English bowlers feasted on him. But he showed the wherewithal to fight back, to not lose his head, to try still and wait for the kiss of life. So much so he would take the trivia jokes in a light-hearted vein.
