Kuldeep Yadav closed Delhi Capitals’ campaign with 3 for 29 against Kolkata Knight Riders on Saturday evening, yet the left-arm wrist-spinner did not disguise the fact that the overall season fell short of his – and his team’s – expectations.
“We wanted as a team to have a great season, but we couldn’t finish in that top four slot,” he said after collecting the Player-of-the-Match award. “Personally, I thought I didn’t have a great season, to be very honest. I was expecting more from myself, but I couldn’t deliver this season.”
Those numbers back him up. Across ten innings before the KKR fixture he had managed only seven wickets, conceding 10.66 runs an over – high by any yardstick – and averaging 50.28 per dismissal. Delhi, who never really shook off an untidy start, finished mid-table.
Key spell, but a familiar venue
Back at Eden Gardens, a ground that has traditionally been kind to him, Kuldeep found some rhythm almost straight away. Cameron Green mis-timed to long-off in his first over, Ajinkya Rahane then sliced a tossed-up leg-break, and Rinku Singh fell first ball to a sharp chance at deep square. A hat-trick was suddenly on the cards. It never arrived, yet the figures, and perhaps more importantly the feel of the ball coming out of the hand, were an immediate improvement.
Axar Patel, who had missed his usual spin partner during defeat to Chennai Super Kings a fortnight ago, had said then: “when we were bowling, I missed my partner Kuldeep”. This time the partnership clicked, the pair conceding only 55 in eight overs between them, which gave the Capitals enough of a cushion to stroll home by 40 runs.
Technical tune-up at home
So what changed? After Delhi’s previous match, Kuldeep headed back to Kanpur and spent two days with his childhood coach. The pair did not reinvent anything; instead they stripped things back.
“After the last game, I went back home and I worked with my coach on what are the things I need to work on are, and I played one game over there. Just the small things which you forget very quickly, especially in white ball,” he explained. “When I spoke to my coach, he was very straightforward with me and said, ‘you need to spin the ball, try to deceive the batter. I know, I understand the batter is going strong against you, but when you’re spinning the ball, you have a chance to get them out’.”
Kuldeep admitted that, in the search for control, he had started bowling “a bit more open chest,” pushing the ball rather than letting it rip. “Once you start using more of your body and try to spin the ball harder… you get the dip and the drift, and obviously you can vary the pace as well.” Saturday’s drift, at least, was back.
Rayudu and Boucher weigh in
Speaking on television afterwards, Ambati Rayudu felt the adjustment was obvious. “He looked a yard quicker through the air and the seam was scrambled nicely,” he said. Mark Boucher, on the same panel, added that Kuldeep’s changes were “small but significant – that fuller body rotation lets him impart his natural revs”. Both agreed that a single performance will not magically wipe away the earlier inconsistency, but it is a start.
Looking ahead
Delhi’s season is over, so Kuldeep’s next competitive cricket will likely be India’s tour of Zimbabwe in July, should the selectors keep faith. At 31 he remains, on his day, India’s most attacking slow option in limited-overs cricket. But competition continues to stiffen; Ravi Bishnoi and others have made compelling cases.
Kuldeep, for his part, sounded more relieved than triumphant. “I was very clear with my plan. I saw the wicket, the first thing, that it was a bit slow, and I was just trying to vary the pace and mix it up with a scrambled seam, and trying to deceive the batter,” he said. That dismissal of Rinku Singh? “The wicket of Rinku was a perfect…” he began, before the sentence trailed off into a laugh – half pride, half acknowledgement of what might have been had the rhythm returned a few weeks earlier.
There is, then, work still to do. A short break, some red-ball overs perhaps, and another chat with the coach back home seem likely. Spin bowling, as every practitioner will tell you, is a constant balance between feel and function. For one night in Kolkata, Kuldeep Yadav found that balance again; sustaining it through an entire IPL remains the next challenge.
