Having arrived home from the long tour of England, left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav is currently in Bangalore gaining invaluable experience of playing red-ball four day cricket after a very long gap against Australia A.
Kuldeep, who has played only three Tests for the country, has made himself a very important of India's limited overs setup, but it has come at a cost of his development as a first-class cricketer.
It was very well seen at Lord's during the ongoing Test series in England, where having had no recent longer version games behind him, he bowled 9 overs unfruitful overs for 44 runs.
Kuldeep is such a beautifully classical leg-spinner and captures the imagination of everyone about his Test credentials but, it's incredible how differently batsmen respond to what he does across formats. Having picked up 5/24 in the first T20I at Manchester as well as 5/26 at Trent Bridge in the first ODI, Kuldeep struggled to trouble the batsmen in a Test on the same England tour, is a prime example.
"You have to change your mindset when playing red ball. You need to be patient." stressing on the difficulty of adjusting to different formats, Kuldeep said, "For me, it was very challenging to use the red ball after a gap because I was quite used to white-ball cricket and then I was selected to the Test team,"
“In ODIs and T20s you tend to try a lot of variations but with the red ball you need to focus on your line and length,” he added.
On the move to comeback at the end of Trent Bridge Test to feature for India A, Kuldeep revealed, "I spoke to MSK (Prasad) sir and Ravi (Shastri) sir (as I left England). There the conditions were such that only one spinner was needed. Here (playing the four-day game against Australia ‘A’) there were some chances for me because sitting out of the team does not really help ."
"So in that perspective, these two games (against Australia ‘A’) are very important. I can build my red-ball experience. If I get into rhythm now, then I will be in a better place against the West Indies when they come here,” he concluded.
(Inputs from Times of India)
