For Kuldeep Yadav, rhythm is everything. It’s what aids his drift, helps develop a loop to deceive batters in the air, and gives him confidence to sequence his deliveries better.
However, he says, rhythm only comes with time in the middle, something he didn’t have a lot of through the course of an entire Test series in England, because the team opted for batting depth.
“In England, obviously, looking at the conditions and the combination of the team, I didn’t get a place in the XI,” he said ahead of India’s final group match against Oman in Abu Dhabi in the Asia Cup. “But it was a very good time for me to work on myself, to improve my fitness and to give more volume to bowling, because it is very important.”
Instead of sitting and sulking, Kuldeep developed his own pattern to training, and analysed his game, and picked out certain markers for when his time would come.
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“As a player, you learn a lot when you don’t play,” he said. “When the team reacts to certain situations, you can judge from the outside. You have a lot of ideas when you are in this situation, as to how to react and how you can bowl. I got a lot of ideas from there.
“The communication [when he didn’t play] from Gauti [head coach Gautam Gambhir] was very clear. He was very straightforward. When you don’t play, it is very easy to blame someone. To take it constructively and improve is tough. There are two ways and players choose according to themselves.
“But it is very important that you keep working hard. The game is such that you have good and bad days. If you are not playing, you have time to improve on your own and become a better player when you get the chance.”
