India vs West Indies: The Red-Ball Cricket Is Very Close To My Heart: Kuldeep Yadav

Expressing his love for Test cricket, India spinner Kuldeep Yadav said he wants to feature in Test cricket regularly after taking a match-winning five-wicket haul against West Indies in the first Test at Rajkot.

It was an impressive return to Test cricket for Kuldeep Yadav. The chinaman spinner became only the seventh bowler and second Indian to pick up a five-wicket haul in all three formats of the game. He also became only the second chinaman spinner to pick up a fifer in Tests.

Kuldeep’s Test career has panned out in contrasting manner to that of his limited-overs career. While he has become an indispensable part of the ODI and T20I teams, the same cannot be said for the Test team. The left-arm spinner had begun his Test career on a bang by picking up four wickets against Australia. However, his last outing prior to the recently-concluded match was a tough one. He went wicketless in the second Test against England at Lord’s. And the team didn’t give him another chance in addition to dropping him from the squad.

But when he got another chance to prove himself, he grabbed the opportunity with both the hands.

He took 5 for 57 in the second innings, as India thrashed West Indies by an innings and 272 runs.

Speaking at the end of the game, Kuldeep said he was in a desperate rush to get better at red-ball cricket. The spinner revealed how desperately he worked with his coach to improve his bowling in Tests.

“I went to my coach after returning from England, I bowled a lot with the red ball for 3-4 days. It was difficult for me since after playing with the white ball, you tend to lose the rhythm (for red-ball cricket). I was with my sir [coach] for 4-5 days. Concentrated a lot on bowling around the wicket as well as over the wicket, on my release. And also on the pace since in one-day cricket your pace increases. But when you play Test cricket, you have to ‘air’ the ball hoping that the batsman would take his chance,” he said.

Kuldeep had to return home midway through the England series. He was added to the A team that was playing first-class matches in Bengaluru.

“The red-ball cricket is very close to my (heart) and I want to play red-ball cricket for long. That’s the whole focus. In England, the conditions were different, maybe I could have bowled well there, but it did not happen that way. Then after coming here, played two matches with India A, it was a good comeback,” he added.

Kuldeep’s performance in the first innings was a poor one. He picked up justone wicket from his ten overs while conceding 62 runs. When asked about the reason, Kuldeep said:

“Every time I gave the ball flight, runs were leaking. So when I came back for the second innings, I thought of putting a lid on the scoring rate, and [felt] as a result, wickets would come. So that was the plan – I had to guard against that extra flight because these West Indies batsmen have the power game, they can score freely. So I kept it in mind, used the variations and plugged the scoring rate.”

The second and last Test gets underway on October 12 at Hyderabad.