Kuldeep Yadav admits not bowling well during Lord’s Test: The Indian chinaman bowler was vocal about the year gone by.
There cannot be many lower points for a cricketer than being dropped midway from an overseas tour. Kuldeep Yadav’s surprising inclusion into India’s playing XI for the second Test of the tour of England last year was followed by a even more surprising exclusion from the squad.
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In the nine overs which Kuldeep Yadav bowled during the Lord’s Test, he conceded 44 runs without causing much trouble to the opposition batsman. In a recent interview with ESPN cricinfo, Yadav explained how making the transition from white-ball cricket to red-ball cricket was tough for him.
“It’s very difficult to switch from white-ball cricket to red-ball cricket. If you keep playing red-ball cricket, it’s easy to adjust as a spinner, but I’m regularly playing with the white ball, so when I got the chance [at Lord’s], I wasn’t prepared enough to tackle everything.
“It’s difficult when you’re playing abroad. At Lord’s, I can’t say the conditions weren’t up to the mark, but it was difficult. I wasn’t used to bowling with the Dukes ball, so when I returned, I worked really hard with my coach [Kapil Pandey]. I discussed what I’d done there, and from then, I started thinking about Test cricket. That has been the one thing in my mind since then,” the chinaman bowler was quoted as saying.
“I didn’t bowl well. That’s the hard truth”
Kuldeep Yadav also didn’t hesitate in admitting the hard truth that he didn’t bowl well during the match. “It took me seven days to actually get over my Lord’s performance and bounce back. I didn’t bowl well. That’s the hard truth. I didn’t think of wickets or conditions. It was just that I didn’t bowl well,” he said.
Yadav continually laid emphasis on returning home and practicing with his childhood coach before the Windies series. In the three Test matches which he has played since then, he has dismissed 15 batsmen at an average of 23.20, an economy rate of 3.55 and a strike rate of 39.1.
In the only Test which he played in Australia, Yadav registered his second Test five-wicket haul as he picked up bowling figures of 31.5-6-99-5. The performance made coach Ravi Shastri term Kuldeep Yadav as India’s primary spinner for overseas Tests.
