Delhi Capitals’ misfiring campaign gained another unwelcome subplot on Friday when Kuldeep Yadav returned none for 41 in three overs against Kolkata Knight Riders – his sixth wicket-less outing on the trot and the latest reminder that the left-arm wrist-spinner remains well short of his best.
The bare numbers are harsh. Eleven matches, seven wickets, an economy rate of 10.66 and an average nudging 50. Only T Natarajan, who is regularly asked to close out innings, has conceded runs at a quicker clip among bowlers to deliver 30 overs or more this season. Those figures help explain why Delhi have lost seven of their 11 fixtures and hover outside the play-off picture.
“We are facing that failure,” director of cricket Venugopal Rao admitted after the 24-run defeat in Kolkata. The frustration was evident: Delhi’s batters had dragged the chase deep, yet the match was effectively lost during Knight Riders’ surge in the middle overs, most of it coming at Kuldeep’s expense.
A quick look at the wagon wheel shows why. Finn Allen struck the left-armer for four sixes, Cameron Green added another, and each maximum came from a different line or length. Two short balls disappeared over mid-wicket, while fuller, wider offerings sailed straight or high over extra cover. Consistency, the word coaches repeat most often to spinners, has deserted Kuldeep since the opening fortnight.
Deep Dasgupta, speaking on TimeOut, did not mince words. “My thing with Kuldeep is that you can’t be hit for six over square leg off a short ball, and over long-off and long on [as well],” he said. “I’d rather have him be hit over mid-off and mid-on – down the ground – rather than square of the wicket or extra cover. Anything off the front foot [is fine]. You get hit off the front foot fair enough, but not off the back foot.”
Mitchell McClenaghan, on the same broadcast, spotted a similar pattern. “I saw a lot of deliveries between fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth stump, just in that nice hand-freeing arc,” the former New Zealand seamer noted, pointing to the corridor that modern power-hitters feast on.
Why, then, is a bowler renowned for drift and dip now feeding that arc? Two theories circulate inside the Capitals’ dressing-room. The first is rhythm: Kuldeep is reputedly tinkering with his run-up to generate a touch more pace, yet the adjustment may have blurred his innate feel for length. The second involves match-ups. Delhi’s data team, eager to counter specific right-handers, have asked him to start wider of the crease, trusting the googly to slide across. The tactic has not stuck, and the left-armer’s release points now vary by more than 30cm compared with last season – a sizeable margin for any spinner.
Dasgupta believes a simple field change could help. “The moment you put a slip in place, from a bowler’s point of view, you’re thinking, ‘I need to pick a wicket’. You’re not picking a wicket off a short ball, right? You’re picking a wicket off a fuller delivery. So straightaway, mentally, you’re bowling fuller. So that is the kind of space that you’d rather have Kuldeep in. Even if he gets hit, it’s off the front foot down the ground rather than square of the wicket.”
The data backs that up to a degree. According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball logs, Kuldeep has pitched up 70 times this season; those deliveries have leaked 178 runs, a strike rate north of 250. That reading may tempt him back to the shorter stuff, yet coaches emphasise the context: many of those fuller balls came after he had already been attacked, when set batters were happy to swing from the hip.
A more instructive split is between stump-to-stump lines and everything else. When Kuldeep hits the stumps, opposition players strike below 140 – hardly a disaster. Anything that lands outside off, though, has been punished at almost twice that pace. In short, width is hurting more than length.
What next? With three league matches remaining, Delhi have little choice but to persist. Axar Patel and the rookie quicks need a reliable partner in the middle overs, and Kuldeep, for all the current angst, remains their best option on paper. The team management may ask him to bowl earlier, against new batters, hoping a wicket breaks the cycle. Equally, biting the bullet and playing a conventional off-spinner is on the table, although the squad list offers few obvious candidates.
For Kuldeep himself, the task is painfully simple: straighten the line, trust the drift, and let the pitch – not the stands – catch the ball. Deliver that, even for two overs, and both his numbers and Delhi’s season could look very different.
But as every spinner knows, the gap between the training nets and a night at Eden Gardens can feel wider than the cut strip. At present, that gap is costing the Capitals dearly.
