A little over 25 months ago, Kuldeep Yadav picked up his maiden five-wicket haul in Tests, in his first bowl in Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The following day, his head coach insisted that the left-arm wrist-spinner had made a strong enough case to be a Test regular.
Ravi Shastri’s proclamation came on Jan. 7, 2019, the day India officially secured their first series triumph Down Under. More than two years on, Kuldeep has yet to figure in any of India’s 14 subsequent Tests, at home and away.
The dramatic fall from grace of a rare purveyor of an unusual craft has been one of the less-discussed tales in Indian cricket. In the sea of anguish following the World Cup semi-final loss to New Zealand in 2019 and the ocean of ecstasy owing to the emergence of such exciting talent as Shubman Gill, Washington Sundar and T Natarajan, the one-time darling of the think-tank has unobtrusively slipped into relative anonymity.
Alongside Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep was handpicked as the answer to India’s middle-over bowling woes in 50-over cricket in the immediacy of the Champions Trophy final loss to Pakistan in mid-2017. Instantly, the pencil-thin leg-spinner and his pixie mirror-image struck a wonderful tandem to justify the almost knee-jerk axing of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja from the white-ball landscape after one ordinary tournament.
Their compelling craft and mesmeric hold over crease-tied batsmen who saw spitting cobras in the little orbs of white propelled by strong fingers and supple wrists went a long way towards India rediscovering their limited-overs mojo. While Chahal was pigeonholed into the white-ball compartment, Kuldeep’s uniqueness – the number of active left-arm wrist-spinners in international cricket can be counted on half the fingers in one hand – and his first-class exploits had earned him a call-up to the longer version long before the status of a limited-overs saviour was conferred.
On debut in March 2017, Kuldeep showed up the folly of not having blooded him at least a game earlier. On a Dharamsala surface with little 'Indian-ness', he flummoxed Australia’s best with variety and control; ironically, feeding off tips from Shane Warne, he bamboozled David Warner with a flipper and scythed through Peter Handscomb and Glenn Maxwell’s defences to finish with four for 68 in his first international bowl. Four years on, he has played a mere six Tests, even though he boasts a strike-rate of 41.2 – a wicket less than every seven overs.
What’s gone so horribly wrong that the potential Kuldeep fairy tale has unravelled this spectacularly? Has he been struck down by a horror case of the 'yips' that wrist-spinners, in particular, are highly vulnerable to? Have analysts deconstructed his mystery, thus arming batsmen with information to not just survive against, but to actually dominate him? Has Kuldeep been slow to react and reinvent himself? Is he going through a crisis of confidence? At 26, is he already at a career crossroads?
There is no all-encompassing answer to these intertwined questions though you’d tend to go with a long-drawn out, hesitant 'yesssss' to the last two. Kuldeep’s T20 form, especially, has been little more than ordinary in the last 22 months or so – he has only featured in 14 of the Kolkata Knight Riders' 28 matches in IPL 2019 and 2020 combined and finds himself out of the national team – but if he is in the Test squad, it must be construed that he is good enough to be picked in the 11.
Kuldeep went to Australia ostensibly as the third spinner, behind Jadeja and Ashwin. He has since been superseded in the pecking order by Washington Sundar, Axar Patel and Shahbaz Nadeem. He watched from the sidelines at Chepauk last week as Washington and Nadeem casually released whatever pressure Ashwin might have created at the other end. If that didn't prick his pride, one's not sure what else will, truth to tell.
It's not as if, in Jadeja's injury-enforced absence, Kuldeep is guaranteed to storm the citadel and provide the deliverance the team so badly needs. However, of all the spin resources at Virat Kohli’s disposal, he is the most likely after, or alongside, Ashwin to pick up wickets. For a captain who otherwise talks an aggressive game, Kohli’s conservatism when it comes to Kuldeep is as baffling as his lumping off-spinners and left-arm wrist spinners in the same basket.
Kuldeep can’t return to wickets and confidence by watching from the outer or watching others taste success. Either he gets a game or is released to at least play domestic cricket – his last outing for Uttar Pradesh in any format was in November 2019 – so that he gets game time and a more realistic sense of where he stands as a bowler. This current impasse is in no one’s interest.
(R Kaushik is a Bangalore-based cricket writer with nearly three decades of experience)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
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