Kuldeep Yadav must work on his skills, rethink strategy, keep a step ahead of batsmen to retain his 'mystery'

Kuldeep Yadav bowls left-arm unorthodox spin. I wonder how many English batsmen lost sleep over the last month or so, wondering how to tackle his seemingly unplayable bowling. It was all Greek to them — or was it ‘Mandarin’ — till they decided to do something about it. Every left-arm unorthodox spin bowler till a year ago was referred to as a ‘chinaman’. After a cricket writer of Chinese descent raised objection to the term, calling it racist, most of the top cricket publications, commentators and writers have stopped using the now derogatory term. How did the term ‘chinaman’ originate? It is said that England’s Walter Robbins was facing left-arm spinner Ellis Achong of the West Indies in a Test match at Old Trafford in 1933. Achong — who was of Chinese descent — all of a sudden produced a wrist-spinner that broke into Robbins, surprised him and had him stumped. As he walked away, Robbins is said to have told the umpire, “Fancy being done by a bloody Chinaman!” Thereon, the left-arm unorthodox style of bowling was known as ‘chinaman’. So Yadav is no longer a ‘chinaman’; he is a left-arm unorthodox spinner. Is he a ‘mystery’ bowler as termed by most English writers? Not really, unless he is bowling to batsmen who are from England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the West Indies etc.

To those deceived by his sleight of hand, Yadav can have a mesmeric effect on batsmen and therefore can be an enigma.

He basically bowls three types of deliveries: 1. The left-armer’s leg break that spins into the right-handed batsman. This is the mirror-image of a right-arm leg-break and is released from the side of the hand. 2. The ‘googly’, released with the palm facing backwards, turns away from the right-handed batsman, and 3. The ‘flipper’, which is squeezed out of the front of the palm, with a back-spin imparted, so that the ball goes straight through after pitching and stays low. The first one is Yadav’s stock delivery and the other two are ‘sleight of the hand’ balls that most of his adversaries can’t distinguish from the first. Afghanistan’s leggie, Rashid Khan’s bowling arm is a blur as he delivers his leg-breaks, googlies and top-spinners. Therefore it is difficult for batsmen facing him to guess which way the ball will turn. BS Chandrasekhar, the legendary Indian leg-spinner too bowled at medium-pace, his top-spinners most often taking batsmen of the 1960s and ’70s by surprise. Yadav on the other hand has a release that is smooth and discernible. What then is the cause of the Englishmen’s sleepless nights of recent times? It isn’t just the variations that trouble them; it is also his nagging line and length, the rotations and the resultant drift that he achieves and of course, the courage he has shown to keep tossing it up. [caption id=“attachment_4888291” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Kuldeep Yadav, Clarrie Grimmett, John Gleeson. Illustration courtesy Austin Coutinho[/caption] Batsmen at the international level, at most times, play by instinct. Besides preparing physically and mentally for the rigours of performing at the top, batsmen face different types of deliveries, hundreds of times in the nets or from throw-downs, to react appropriately when they are out there in the middle. Batsmen at the first stage usually learn to react to a delivery after it pitches. A little experience teaches them to watch the seam and react accordingly, as the ball swings or turns. The masters watch the release of the ball, the seam as the ball travels in the air and then its behaviour as it comes off the pitch — all in less than half a second. Therefore, there’s hardly any time to think; it’s all impulse and gut feeling. The problem with ‘mystery’ spinners is that they are a rarity in any class of cricket. Not every team gets to practise against the likes of a Yadav or a Rashid Khan or a Sunil Narine. Therefore, batsmen from countries where there is dearths of quality spin bowling learn to pick turn — or the lack of it — from watching the seam or worse, after the ball pitches. English batsmen found Yadav difficult to pick because they neither watched his release nor the seam; they played him off the pitch. Another issue the Englishmen had with Yadav was that their footwork was tentative. Usually averse to stepping out against spinners, they froze in their creases and were therefore cannon fodder for the young bowler’s deceptions. In the T20 series played recently in England, which India won 2-1, Yadav picked five wickets for 24 runs in the first match, gave away 34 runs in four overs in the second match, not picking any wickets, and wasn’t played in the third match. In the ODIs that followed, he bamboozled the Englishmen in the first match which India won easily. He picked six wickets for 25 runs. In the second and third matches, Yadav wasn’t impressive at all. He picked three wickets, conceding 68 runs, in ten overs, in the second ODI and then bowled ten overs for 55 runs without claiming a wicket, in the decider, as India lost the series 1-2. How did England sort him out? They used ‘Merlyn’, the spin bowling machine in the nets, to get used to watching the seam of the ball rather watching the ball turning of the pitch. Secondly, they invited a couple of left-arm unorthodox spinners to their nets. Finally, as Adil Rashid explained later, they decided to move their feet — either to get onto the front-foot or the back-foot — decisively. Both Joe Root and Eoin Morgan demonstrated how effective these measures were when England won the final ODI without much ado. Some top cricketing experts and pundits had expected Yadav to play a decisive role in the first India-England Test at Edgbaston this August. He wasn’t played. Was it due to the fact that he was sorted out in the ODIs? Does Team India feel Yadav is being over-exposed before the 2019 World Cup? ‘Mystery’ spinners usually have a short shelf-life and need to be protected. From Clarrie Grimmett to Jack Iverson, from Sonny Ramadhin to Johnny Gleeson and from Paul Adams — with the frog in the blender action — to Ajantha Mendis, they have all been sorted out. There is the yarn of Grimmett’s wrist giving off a ‘click’ when he bowled the googly. When the story made the rounds among batsmen who had been at the receiving end of his tricks for many years, he deliberately clicked his fingers of the left hand, while bowling his stock delivery, to keep them guessing. He was a step ahead of the batsmen. Grimmett played 37 Tests, picking 216 wickets. John Gleeson, with his bent finger spin had troubled many a top batsman the world over in the 1960s. In 1970-71, when England toured Australia, Geoff Boycott played him with a lot of comfort. In one Test, Basil D’Oliveira, watching Boycott bat, sorted Gleeson out. “I’ve got it,” he said to his partner. “Play him like an off-spinner.” “I know,” replied the Yorkshireman. “Don’t tell the others. Let them sort it out for themselves.” Boycott may have been selfish but players these days exchange notes. Great batsmen always unravel bowlers’ actions, however troublesome they may be. In the mid-70s, practicing at the Green Park in Kanpur, Tiger Pataudi was bowled twice in consecutive deliveries by a little known Uttar Pradesh left-arm spinner. Annoyed, the ‘Nawab’ soon realised that the bowler, try as he might, couldn’t spin the ball away. In the next few deliveries, he waited for the ball to break in and flicked it, between his legs, to fine leg. The demoralised bowler stopped bowling to the legend. Yadav can be a match-winner for India if he is used as a surprise package. With modern technology, support staff consisting of experts and contraptions like ‘Merlyn’ available to every team, bowlers can no longer hold on to their secret deliveries for too long. Like Grimmett, Yadav will have to work on his skills, rethink strategy and keep a step ahead of the batsmen. It’s the mystery of the ‘mystery’ spinner that Team India will need to solve if Yadav has to contribute to India’s World Cup effort in 2019. Interesting year ahead for the young ‘left-arm unorthodox spinner’! The author is a caricaturist and sportswriter. A former fast bowler and coach, he is now a sought-after mental toughness trainer.