Rakesh Patel, a fiery pacer during his decade-long First-Class career for Gujarat and Baroda, was watching the second India-West Indies ODI, along with some of Gujarat’s promising youngsters, from the gallery.
Rakesh, now Gujarat bowling coach, was gushing over virtually every ball that came out of Prasidh Krishna ’s hands.
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While Rakesh was known for bowling fuller and beating the batters with pace and movement, Prasidh virtually ran through the West Indies batters with his combination of raw pace and natural back-of-length.
Wicket-taker
Such was his consistency that the tall pacer drew praise from all over after registering the best individual performance of his international career. The fact that he already has two four-wicket hauls, including Wednesday’s four for 12 , in six ODIs underlines his wicket-taking ability.
When Prasidh burst onto the Indian Premier League stage in 2018, just like a majority of budding pacers, he had little control.
Fine-tuning
But grinding through the IPL and domestic cricket has resulted in him taking huge strides in being a strong contender to be a regular in India’s pace battery.
That he has been around the senior squad virtually all through the last year, thanks to international teams being forced to carry a large contingent due to the pandemic, has helped Prasidh fine-tune his skills immensely.
Even after being tonked by Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes in Pune last year, Prasidh has continued to work on his skills. The results were evident in the last three weeks, in South Africa and Ahmedabad.
So what has he been working on in the nets over the last year?
“It’s been almost a year since I made my ODI debut. I have been striving for consistency. When I began, I used to get over-excited,” Prasidh said.
Clear-cut plans
“But over time, I have had my plans and I have been very clear on what I needed to work on. Glad it paid off.”
If Prasidh continues the way he did on Wednesday , not just Rakesh but the cricket fraternity itself will soon stand in awe of him.
