Prasidh Krishna is not the bowling answer India expected but the solution they need right now

Picture this: India are struggling to pick wickets against a top-quality bowling opposition. Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami have made the new ball talk but have absolutely nothing to show for their efforts. Both have bowled an excellent spell but in the unforgiving Indian heat, both started to blow and gasp for every speck of available oxygen.

At that juncture, the Indian captain tries to look around for a possible solution. He thinks about spin and unleashes Yuzvendra Chahal. The batters, though, are now established at the crease and have attacked the tweaker with disdain.

All of a sudden, India seem to have run out of options. The batters, who had faced plenty of problems tackling the Men In Blue’s opening spell, now seem primed to dominate. And, rather worryingly from India’s perspective, they don’t seem to have a bowler to stem that kind of momentum.

For a moment, the Indian skipper (in all likelihood Rohit Sharma) gazes up at the heavens, pleading for a pacer who can put in the hard yards in the middle overs and break the game open. He doesn’t want that fast bowler to be as skillful as Bumrah or Shami. He just requires him to be as honest a trier as any and invest every ounce of energy.

And then, his eyes get trained on Prasidh Krishna – a pacer who can move the new ball pretty decently but more importantly, a fast bowler who can break partnerships, and be quite skillful too.

Prasidh hasn’t played a truckload of ODIs in his career so far. He has only featured in six games and has often been used as a squad player, with the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Bumrah, Shami and Shardul Thakur ahead of him in the pecking order.

Prasidh Krishna has been brilliant in his nascent ODI career

Whenever he has played, though, he has ensured that the rest of the nation has sat up and taken notice. In six ODIs, Prasidh has 15 wickets – with those scalps scattered across rubbers against England, South Africa and the West Indies.

That translates to 2.5 wickets per innings, which in itself is a massive achievement. But when considering the junctures at which he has been effective, it makes for pretty reading – both for Prasidh and the Indian cricket team.

Of the 15 wickets he has taken, 7 have come in what is defined as the middle phase of an innings (overs 11-40). India have, over the past couple of years, huffed and puffed during that stage, especially as Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav have fallen off a cliff.

Subsequently, they haven’t been able to exert enough pressure towards the end, meaning that they have regularly had to chase above-par targets or have frequently seen their relatively middling totals being hunted down.

With Prasidh in the mix, that could be about to change. Not just because he seems to have developed a good track record of doing so, but also because his biggest bowling assets seem suitable for the role India want him to perform.

The pacer is lanky, generates good pace and extracts awkward bounce, even from relatively docile surfaces. He also has the uncanny knack of hurrying the batters and enticing them into playing strokes that they ordinarily wouldn’t – a by-product of his raw pace.

His ODI debut was at Pune in a series where most Indian bowlers were taken apart by England. Prasidh, though, almost always found a way to hold his own. Against South Africa, he wasn’t called upon until the series was a foregone conclusion. However, his miserly bowling ensured that South Africa didn’t post a total in excess of 300 (they ended up with 287).

In fact, that is the next box Prasidh ticks. He doesn’t really stand out as a death bowler but has picked up six of his 15 wickets during that phase of the ODI innings. Prasidh's pace means that there will be days when he takes a bit of tap – like he did in his 3rd ODI against England.

Yet, his propensity to keep hitting hard lengths is invaluable. With increasing experience, it could also be a refreshing change from the fuller lengths Bhuvneshwar, Bumrah and Shami attempt at the death. It is also something that’ll keep the batters guessing.

If you were to draw parallels, Prasidh’s skill-set is very similar to that of Liam Plunkett – a fast bowler who bowled the tough overs and was instrumental in England’s 2019 World Cup triumph. That, by the way, also gives India the luxury to not invest Bumrah’s energies in the middle overs and preserve him for the Power Play and the death-overs.

Prasidh isn’t shabby with the new ball either – as he showed against the West Indies in the 2nd ODI on Wednesday. He doesn’t swing the ball as much as Deepak Chahar but gets devilish seam movement, which combined with his tendency to keep pegging away at a hard length, makes him a complicated proposition to tackle.

So much so that his performances have led many to label him as a prospective red-ball bowler. He has the domestic record to back that up too – 34 wickets in nine matches at an average 20.26 and a strike rate of 43.5 shouldn’t be scoffed at.

There isn’t a lot wrong with earmarking a 25-year-old pacer for success across formats. From a more urgent perspective, though, it is imperative that Prasidh is looked upon as a vital contributor to the ODI side.

Till a year ago, India were, quite regularly, hoping that some form of divine intervention would cure them of their middle-overs bowling ailment. Many different bowlers, including a resurgent Ravichandran Ashwin, an experienced Bhuvneshwar and a returning Kuldeep were tried out. Not many, though, would’ve thought that Prasidh would act as the tonic they were craving.

India may not have expected him to be the answer to their middle-overs bowling woes. Now, he is probably the solution they need. And, at 25 years of age, he could be a solution that materializes so often that India forget where the problem began.