On the eve of the fourth Test between India and Australia at Dharamsala, India looked all but certain of making at least one change to their line-up. The captain Virat Kohli made it clear that if his shoulder wasn’t 100%, he wouldn’t play. Shreyas Iyer, the Mumbai batsman, untested at international level, was asked to join the team. He seemed the most logical replacement, should Kohli sit out.
Even before Iyer’s arrival, fast bowler Mohammed Shami was asked to join the squad. The day before the game, the BCCI confirmed that both Shami and Iyer would be available for selection, hinting that Shami would replace one of the fast bowlers.
On match day, though, there was a surprise. Kohli expectedly sat out, but the man who replaced him was not a batsman — let alone Iyer — but Kuldeep Yadav, a left-arm chinaman bowler who hadn’t yet played for India. Why the fuss over flying in Shami and Iyer, you had to wonder. With the series at stake, India decided to pack their side with five bowlers – as opposed to four in the previous game — to give them the best chance of taking 20 wickets. It came at the expense of a batsman, so it was indeed a gamble.
The gamble sure paid off. Kuldeep is no ordinary left-arm spinner. As a chinaman bowler, he is part of a rare breed of spinners. Other practitioners of the craft in the modern era include Paul Adams, Brad Hogg and Michael Bevan. A left-arm chinaman bowler is the equivalent of a right-arm off-spinner, who occasionally slips in the googly to turn it away from the right-handed batsman.
Kuldeep is no complete stranger, though, having featured for Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League and T20 Champions League. However, it is possible that Australia hadn’t studied videos of his bowling in the lead-up to this Test because they wouldn’t have expected his selection, much like the rest of us.
Kuldeep was in the XI as the third spinner, and he was treated like the third spinner, having been brought on just before lunch, after R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja got their share of overs. Kuldeep’s second ball was slashed for a boundary, but there was an element of risk in David Warner’s shot, so the bowler wouldn’t have minded that.
Post-lunch, though, the Australians got to see a lot of Kuldeep, and he ensured he upset their plans. Australia owned the morning session, scoring 131 runs with both Steve Smith and Warner making half-centuries and scoring at over four runs per over. Then Kuldeep struck, against the run of play.
Warner tried to repeat the boundary he scored before lunch, only this time he picked the wrong ball to do it. The ball from Kuldeep was actually fuller, but Warner stayed back, looking to cut. The extra bounce caught him by surprise and the ball did not spin away from him enough to cut. Cramped for room, he decided to slice it anyway but ended up edging to Ajinkya Rahane who took a sharp catch at slip.
Warner’s wicket opened the floodgates, with Shaun Marsh departing three overs later. When Kuldeep was asked at the end of the day’s play to pick the wicket he cherished the most, he spoke of the ball that got Peter Handscomb. It’s not hard to see why. It was a classic spinner’s dismissal – toss it up, deceive the batsman in flight, get it to drift in and beat the bat. Handscomb was shaping to play an expansive drive, but the ball turned back in and went past the massive gap between pad and bat and hit the stumps. Kuldeep said it was a calculated dismissal. He had been setting up Handscomb for the ball that goes away, but instead bowled the chinaman and got the ball to spin towards the batsman.
The ball that got Glenn Maxwell looked the most sensational of the lot, given how Maxwell was foxed by the turn. It was the googly that got him. Maxwell stayed back to a ball that pitched on middle stump and spun away from the right-hander. Maxwell couldn’t change his position in the split second, and the ball hit his pad and knocked the top of the off stump, chipping away the bail in the process.
Kuldeep had sent back three specialist batsmen and Australia went from 144 for 1 to 178 for 5 and the momentum had shifted. Kuldeep had time to get one more, getting Pat Cummins to spoon a return catch. It was a similar ball to the one that got Handscomb – a flighted ball tempting the drive.
Kuldeep got three of his wickets off three different balls – one that didn’t turn, the chinaman and the googly. Another factor that may have unsettled the Australians was his control. It’s not unusual for leg-spinners and chinamen bowlers in particular to bowl the odd loose ball. It’s not an easy craft to master, it requires patience and it’s not always possible to bowl six balls on the same spot. Kuldeep didn’t allow the Australians to gain confidence against him by bowling too many loose balls and that helped fetch wickets.
Kuldeep may not have finished with a five-wicket haul in his first bowling innings in a Test (he has the second innings to achieve that), but he will take this any day. He said he wasn’t nervous, “treating this like a Ranji Trophy game”.
Did Kuldeep know in advance he was going to play this game? Was the Shami-Iyer call-up a ploy to confuse everyone about India’s likely XI? If it was indeed a secret, it was a well-kept one.
