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England v India: Praveen Kumar claims bowling honours with five wickets

By Simon Hughes
Updated Saturday, 23 July 2011 11:07:38 - IST (UTC +5:30)


Lords: At the beginning of the colour television era there was Abid Ali, an awkward-looking character with a funny backward shuffle at the beginning of his run, but an ability to swing the ball away late. He was succeeded by the likes of Madan Lal and Roger Binny, who bowled India to World Cup glory in 1983, spearheaded of course by the legendary Kapil Dev, who had a wicked late outswinger.
Praveen Kumar, 24, is from the same stable. From Uttar Pradesh, where you can fry a samosa on the road in summer, he has a method that is relatively heat resistant. Shuffling to the wicket off an efficient 12-pace run, he has a good pivot at the crease, a whippy action that sets the seam bolt upright and an abbreviated follow through. He looks as if he bowls within himself, but the ball kisses rather than rams into the pitch from a full length and seems to glide off it quicker than it arrived.
A short, squat figure, Praveen appears an unprepossessing sight. Crucially he swings the ball late either way with good disguise. This is achieved by a perfect cocked wrist and making sure the fingers are dragged down behind the ball on release to create backspin, with the seam tilted slightly one way or the other, acting as a rudder.
His control of length is superb. It was hard to recall a half-volley in his first 30 overs and the only short deliveries were attempted bouncers, attempting to stop the batsmen from standing out of their crease but which, unfortunately for him, failed to get up.
Belying his inexperience – he only made his Test debut in the West Indies last month – he kept all the England batsmen in check with impressive control but the real noticeable thing was his clear wicket-taking nous.
He was aware of Jonathan Trott’s tendency to shuffle across and pick off balls through midwicket. A batsman’s strength can also be his weakness. So he cannily slipped a couple of inswingers towards Trott’s leg stump, one of which snaked into his pads and snared him lbw.
Kumar’s keen cricketing brain featured in the key moment of the day, but it didn’t get the reward it merited. Still searching for fluency in the morning, Kevin Pietersen was strolling across his stumps trying to flick everything to leg. He had laboured to 49 but looked far from convincing.
Instead of complying with a conservative team policy and concentrating in a run-denying channel outside off stump, Kumar was ambitious. He attempted to slip an inswinging yorker behind Pietersen’s legs, trying to bowl him. The first attempt swung too much, the second Pietersen just managed to dig out, after which Kumar positioned Rahul Dravid at leg slip. Waltzing across again, Pietersen got bat to ball as it slipped behind him, clipping it straight into the diving Dravid’s hands.
To the naked eye, it looked a clean catch, and a superbly conceived wicket. But as is usually the case nowadays, the batsman stood, the fielder shrugged, the umpires consulted and the inevitable happened. From the two dimensional TV pictures, the third umpire could not be entirely confident that the ball had not touched the ground and Pietersen was given not out.
If only batsmen and umpires could agree to take the fielder’s word, but that is like expecting cyclists to stop at red lights.
There ensued an extended verbal duel between Kumar and Pietersen – colleagues in the Royal Challengers Bangalore IPL team last year – some of it jovial, some of it not. Significantly, Kumar was not distracted from his focus, never offering Pietersen easy runs, willingly bowling Zaheer Khan’s overs.
After a succession of in-duckers, he found an unplayable outswinger for Ian Bell, to achieve what no man has managed for six Test innings – to dismiss Bell for less than 50. He followed up with a peach to Eoin Morgan which may have just grazed his inside edge as he groped forward.
Into his 40th over he made one slide down the Lord’s slope and flick Matt Prior’s edge, and with the sight of Stuart Broad striding out, had five wickets in his sights. Broad knew what his first ball was going to be. A late inswinger seeking to trap him lbw. Kumar knew he knew.
Such was the perfection of the delivery – the exact full length, the probing line, the wicked late swing all achieved with a simple snap of the wrist – Broad was powerless to intervene. It was the less ostentatious honours-board moment of the day, but, achieved with old fashioned skill and cunning, it was no less deserved. (Telegraph)

Tags: Simon Hughes India v/s England, Parveen Kumar

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