Kuldeep Yadav 2.0 might just be his best version yet

Picture this: there is a new left-arm wrist-spinner in town and almost everyone is talking about him. He has risen through the ranks and has cast himself as a precocious youngster – one capable of tilting games of cricket off his own accord. At first, there is a bit of scepticism. This style of bowling isn’t very ubiquitous and those who’ve tried in the past, have often not been sustainable. But the gamble is taken.

The spinner announces himself on the international stage commandingly. He bamboozles nearly every opposition batter he faces and he becomes the toast of the country and the team management. The head coach even proclaims that he is the nation’s best overseas spinner, despite the presence of two other world-class operators.

In white-ball cricket, this lad has a tendency to get carted around, considering he is always looking for openings. But he picks up plenty of wickets too, meaning that that trade-off is worth it. Simply put, this spinner is a captain’s delight, capable of breaking open the match at any juncture.

So, the world is at his feet. His variations have remained undecipherable, and there is a growing aura about him. He also believes he is capable of moments of absolute magic. If he is in your team, you will always have a trump card, irrespective of where the game is placed. Just at that moment, though, things break – just as quickly as he shot to stardom.

A few confidence-sapping spells and injury concerns mean that he is cast aside for more than a year. Even in a franchise T20 competition, he doesn’t get picked. 40-year-olds, who have run their race long ago, play consistently when an extra spinner is needed. But this young lad, who was labelled one of the best match-winners in the country, is only carrying drinks.

Sounds heart-breaking, right?

Just wrap this story up and visualize it for a moment. On first thought, it feels eerily similar to something that has happened in Indian cricket very recently. Think about it for another minute and it comes gushing that this might be the travesty Kuldeep Yadav has been going through – frozen out by India, the Kolkata Knight Riders and not lent the support his talent deserved.

All that, though, has changed this season. Not only is he playing every game at the Delhi Capitals, he is performing and deciding games of cricket like he was always meant to – not too dissimilarly to how he broke onto the scene but via a vastly different modus operandi.

Over the past couple of years, Kuldeep’s lack of pace has been an unnecessary sticky area in his development. Whenever there was talk of reinstating him into the Indian side, many felt he was too slow to make an impact. Funnily enough, spinners aren’t meant to bowl fast but you kind of get the gist around why he was being omitted.

Kuldeep Yadav has been superb in IPL 2022 for DC

Nevertheless, in IPL 2022, Kuldeep seems to have added new strings to his bow – strings that haven’t completely taken away from his innate qualities but have instead complemented them beautifully.

The average pace has improved and he has gotten the ball to fizz in the air, meaning that it has travelled quicker through the air and has done damage off the surface quicker too. That is where the spin and the revolutions he imparts comes into play. For much of his regressive phase, he just wasn’t confident enough to give it a rip. Instead, he placed the ball on a length, hoping that the surface would help him out and deceive the batters.

This season, the change has directly contributed to many wickets. In the first match against the Mumbai Indians, Kuldeep’s back of a length delivery hurried onto Rohit Sharma, meaning that he could only splice his pull towards deep mid-wicket. In that same fixture, Kieron Pollard played the trajectory instead of the length, skimming a catch to Tim Seifert at mid-wicket in the process.

Against KKR at the Brabourne Stadium, the team that famously maintained Kuldeep wasn’t good enough, he hoodwinked Pat Cummins with a good length delivery that skidded through. At the Wankhede Stadium on Thursday, he did something similar when Sunil Narine walked out to bat. The West Indian could neither read the length properly, nor could he pick the googly. He was trapped on the crease and was adjudged LBW.

As always, he has also produced deliveries where he has flummoxed the batters with his flight, guile and dip. In DC’s first encounter against KKR, he enticed Shreyas Iyer into a leg-side hoick, only for Kuldeep to land it on a length too far away from the batter. The ball also ripped past the outside edge before Rishabh Pant effected the stumping.

On Thursday, too, Kuldeep got the better of Andre Russell by looping up a delivery just beyond the Jamaican’s hitting arc. The batter still tried to smash Kuldeep off his length but was stumped – much like Shreyas a fortnight ago.

Thus, it is becoming increasingly clear that this version of Kuldeep aka Kuldeep Yadav 2.0 might be his best yet. He has also equalled his best season-tally in the IPL, and still has at least eight games left. His strike rate and average are also far superior to any previous iteration.

If such numbers lead to a national recall is another matter altogether. But if he does get picked, he will be every bit the bowler who had once propelled himself as the “nation’s best overseas spinner”.

The deception is back. The spring in his step has returned. And the confidence that he can outwit any batter on the planet has become a part of his psyche again. It took quite a bit of time for him to get here, make no mistake about it. It also contained instances where people lost faith in him and discarded him like he wasn’t meant to play top-level cricket. With each passing game, though, it feels he was always meant to decide games of cricket in this manner.

It was heart-breaking for a while and felt a touch unwarranted too. But now, this story of Kuldeep’s revival fills the soul as much as any narrative in recent memory. Back then, he believed in magic. And he seems to have found it again in 2022.