In T20s, the batter wins on some days, and the bowler on others; with Kuldeep these days, the batter usually loses
Karthik Krishnaswamy26-Jun-2024It isn’t always easy to apportion credit when a bowler takes a wicket in T20s. At first glance, Mitchell Marsh c Axar Patel b Kuldeep Yadav, on Monday morning in St Lucia, was one of the many thousands of T20 wickets that simply happen because the pace of the game requires batters to take constant risks that don’t always come off.At first glance, the wicket belonged almost entirely to the catcher, Axar timing his jump perfectly at deep square-leg and plucking the ball out one-handed, at full stretch over his head. It certainly wasn’t a ball from Kuldeep, in the sense that he probably missed his length and ended up dropping shorter than intended.Everything leading up to that moment, though, contributed layers of to that ball, amping up the likelihood that it would create a wicket-taking chance.Related
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The shot Marsh played is best described as a pull, but watch it again, and it becomes clear from his back lift and the way he sets himself up at the crease that it began life as a sweep. This was the eighth ball Marsh faced from Kuldeep on the day, and he had already attempted sweeps or slog-sweeps against three of them. This doesn’t include another proto-sweep that turned into a different shot entirely – the first ball of this very over, in fact, which Marsh had clipped for a single to long-on when Kuldeep, sensing that the sweep was coming, had fired a 90.5kph delivery (the quickest of his spell so far) – right up at the batter’s feet.The three sweeps Marsh had been allowed to play had brought him no runs. Twice Kuldeep had been too quick and full for a clean connection, and on one occasion he had dangled the ball away from the hitting arc, slower and wide of off stump, and beaten his bat, producing a third-umpire referral for a stumping.Kuldeep knew Marsh was itching to sweep him, and he wasn’t going to let him. The seven balls that preceded the wicket ball were all either quick and full and at leg stump, or slower and wide of off, the latter type either wrong’uns or sliders out of the front of his hand. When he wasn’t sweeping, Marsh was having to be content with singles off slaps to the off-side sweeper or flat-bat hits down to long-on.If Marsh wasn’t so intent on sweeping, he may have been better placed to deal with the wicket ball – better balanced, certainly, to get more elevation on his pull or place it wide of the boundary fielder.But sometimes, this is what one-on-one contests in T20s are like, particularly in conditions like those in St Lucia with a strong wind blowing across the ground: a batter chooses the areas he wants to target, and the bowler knows it, and uses all his skills and wiles to try and cut off those shots. The batter wins on some days, and the bowler on others.With Kuldeep, though, it’s increasingly rare that the batter wins, no matter what the format is and what the conditions are. Two months ago in the IPL, when Sunrisers Hyderabad ran away to the biggest powerplay score in T20 history against Delhi Capitals, it didn’t feel entirely against the run of play when Kuldeep came on and took two wickets in the seventh over. He didn’t get them off balls as we traditionally understand them, but if you’re looking to smash the daylights out of everything, your life is just that little bit harder against a bowler who generates more drift and dip than most spinners, varies his pace and trajectory more adroitly than most spinners, has a more intuitive understanding of batters’ intentions than most spinners, and better control and more variations to boot.0:59
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It’s quite something that Kuldeep, with all the above-mentioned tools at his disposal, didn’t feature in any of India’s first-round group games at the T20 World Cup 2024, but that’s just life as India’s best spinner when they need to play four quicks, because their other spinners are excellent bowlers too, and happen to offer a lot of value with the bat. Over the course of the USA leg of this tournament, Kuldeep experienced the T20 version of a feeling R Ashwin has experienced for large swathes of his Test career.But the USA leg is done, and Kuldeep was always going to be a key member of India’s line-up, and one of their trump cards, when the action shifted to the West Indies. And so he has been: in three Super Eight games, he’s taken seven wickets at an average of 10.71, while going at just 6.25 per over. And if those numbers don’t look extraordinary in a bowler-dominated World Cup, here’s a better one: according to ESPNcricinfo’s impact ratings, he’s averaged 53.8 bowling impact points per match so far at this World Cup. Jasprit Bumrah, who’s bowled like he’s from another planet, has gone at 42.7.This, of course, isn’t to say that Kuldeep has bowled than Bumrah or anything of that sort. What those numbers do say, however, is that India have a mind-blowingly good attack, quite likely the best of this tournament.This, of course, was true even last year at the ODI World Cup, and November 19 still turned out the way it did. There are no guarantees, certainly not in knockout games, and India have experienced this time and again over the last so many years and so many global events.Kuldeep Yadav was always going to be a key member of India’s line-up, and one of their trump cards, when the action shifted to the West Indies•ICC/Getty ImagesIt doesn’t diminish how good they are, but their players probably feel some sense of unfulfillment, like a subcutaneous itch that their nails can’t quite get at. And leading up to June 27 in Providence, Guyana, some of them may also feel like they have a point to prove.The India of 2024 are, in both structural and personnel terms, a significantly better T20 side than the India of Adelaide, November 10, 2022. They are no longer hampered by the depth issues that turned them into a diffident, risk-averse batting unit in 2022, and they are a far better bowling side with Bumrah – who missed that World Cup with a back injury – and Kuldeep – who wasn’t selected for the tournament, and wasn’t yet the fully rounded bowler he has since become – in their ranks.Kuldeep didn’t feel the sting of that semi-final defeat, but not being part of it would have hurt, and it may have meant something to him that it was England that knocked India out. It had been England that had left Kuldeep with figures of 1 for 72 in Birmingham in 2019, causing India to veer away from their twin-wristspinner ODI strategy and leave him out of their XI for their semi-final against New Zealand.All that is firmly behind Kuldeep now, and he’s already given England more than a glimpse of how good he has become in the years since. There was this, for instance:
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And there was a Test series earlier this year that Kuldeep dominated, his selection the foremost catalyst for India going from 0-1 to 4-1. If any scars remain from Birmingham, 2019, they are probably exceedingly faint.But if Kuldeep is already well on his way to asserting himself as one of the world’s leading all-format spinners, he still has a bit of distance left to cover. There’ll be a lot less of it if Providence is on his side, and India’s, on Thursday morning.