WRIST ASSURED

Confidence and rhythm restored, Kuldeep Yadav is peaking right in time for the World Cup

- NEERU BHATIA

Kuldeep Yadav would have been happy had the pitches he bowls on been as uneven as his career. The Kanpur-born left-arm wrist spinner went from being the future of Indian spin with Kul-Cha partner, leg spinner Yuzvendra Chahal, to being dropped from the Indian team and benched by his IPL team, Kolkata Knight Riders, for most of a season. Now, weeks before the ODI World Cup at home, he could well be India’s first-choice spinner, given his form. He is India’s leading wicket taker in ODIs this year—31 wickets—and has become the fastest Indian spinner to get 150 ODI wickets.

Yadav might be a “mystery” bowler, but there is no mystery behind the fact that he thrives when he knows that his captain and coach back him completely. That backing was missing, surprisingly at times, under the leadership of Virat Kohli and the then team management. “I always believed I had the talent and skill, [but I was not] mentally strong,” he said a few months ago. “That affected my skills [and] kept [me] under pressure; [there were] negative thoughts.”

Having started his career in 2017, Yadav was quick off the blocks in the shorter formats, especially in ODIs, and became the fastest Indian spinner to 100 ODI wickets in 2019. However, that year was a disappointment on the whole. He had a bad IPL season, in which he picked only four wickets in nine matches. He then had an average outing in the ODI World Cup in England, and slowly went off the boil, culminating in two horrid IPL seasons—in the 2020 edition, he got only five games and just a solitary wicket; he did not get a match in the 2021 season and also picked up a knee injury, which kept him out for seven months.