During the recently held Test series in Australia, wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav was the only member of the original squad who didn’t make it to the playing XI despite India fielding 20 different cricketers through the course of the four-match series because of injury woes.
With Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja missing the final Test in Brisbane due to injuries, Kuldeep must have fancied his chances of leading the Indian attack but the team management opted to go with Washington Sundar, who has better batting capabilities.
Despite being overlooked in Australia, Kuldeep remains in good spirits and the 26-year-old is currently reflecting on his past errors as he is gearing up for the upcoming Test series against England, starting February 5 in Chennai.
Kuldeep stands a good chance of making it to the playing XI versus England since Jadeja is not available for the first two Tests due to an injury.
“At some point you won’t do well and that’s the time you reflect and gain experience so that you don’t repeat those errors in future,” the left-arm spinner said in a video posted by KKR on its website.
Kuldeep’s performance has also gone downhill for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the last couple of seasons. While he featured in 9 games and returned with only 4 wickets in IPL 2019, he claimed just 1 wicket in 4 IPL matches last year in UAE.
“I have been playing for KKR for seven years now, and being a senior player, I need to perform consistently,” said Kuldeep, who has been retained by KKR ahead of the IPL 2021 auction.
“It is challenging but then you need to keep upgrading yourself so that you can maintain a standard always. It’s actually important because franchise cricket is tough with all the expectations from the fans.”
Kuldeep admitted that the pressure of expectations makes him nervous.
“It is a kind of pressure, and of course, that makes me nervous because I want to give my best to my franchise in each game. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t…
“It teaches you a few lessons too as you stay relaxed when you do well and when you don’t play well, you get a chance to reflect on the errors. This is how you learn and cricket is a game where you can’t keep performing well always,” he said.
Kuldeep Yadav also revealed that he wanted to become a fast bowler but his short stature became an obstacle and thus he switched to spin bowling on his coach’s insistence.
“I think I was good at fast bowling. I could swing the ball both ways even at the age of 10-11 years. Even my coach used to feel the same because my wrist work was neat,” he said.
“But the hurdle was my lack of growth (height). So, he asked me to switch to spin bowling. I was pretty angry initially because I never liked spin and always wanted to be a fast bowler.
“I skipped going to the ground for 10 days as I was determined to continue with only fast bowling. But my coach told me that if I really wanted to play cricket, I had to take up spin.”
Kuldeep said chinaman came naturally to him.
“When my coach asked me to try out spin, I didn’t know why I chose to bowl chinaman. It just came naturally to me. My coach felt it was a rare quality in me, so he kept working on it,” he concluded.
(With PTI inputs)
