Duleep Trophy 2016: Kuldeep Yadav traps India Green in his spin web 1

During the Under 19 World cup 2014, a commercial was showed on T.V. promoting Kuldeep Yadav as a mystery bowler which also stated that what Kuldeep Yadav bowls, No one in India can bowl. From then he got a fair amount of limelight, grabbed a hat-trick in the world cup and was able to impress the legendary Sunil Gavaskar who advocated his selection in Indian team which the selectors heard and drafted him in the home series against West Indies in October 2014 for the first three ODI’s. All eyes were on the series, fans that missed U19 world cup were on their toes waiting to see Kuldeep but Dhoni again did a Dhoni, kicking out player no. 31531…. from the team without giving him a chance.

From then, Kuldeep Yadav vanished from the scene and made appearances in domestic cricket and few IPL matches. People forgot him; he too might have lost some confidence. But now he has bounced back on the correct platform, the Pink Ball Duleep Trophy. Boom! He could not have got a better stage than this to showcase his talent. He grabbed the first fifer of his first class career and made batsmen dance to the tune of his spinning flute.

The mystery bowler made a big turnaround for bowlers on Day 3 as pitch which was batting paradise on day 2, turned miles on Day 3 giving assistance to Kuldeep Yadav. He made full use of it thus running over strong batting line up India Green and trapping each and every batsman into the rat trap place by him. It looked like he has done his homework pretty well during these two years so as to come up with this performance to ensure that he is a part of long home series ahead. Surely selectors may consider him after watching this Spin show from the Chinaman bowler.

Kuldeep asked High Order Thinking Skils (HOTS) question to each and every batman, especially to the experienced batsman and captain of Jharkhand Ranji team, Saurabh Tiwary who was puzzled while facing him and thus getting out to him. The five minutes of Kuldeep-Tiwary saga was the best part of the day.

The bat was making utmost efforts to make a contact with the ball but the ball was deceiving the bat on every occasion thus putting more pressure on the batsman. Soon ball won the competition and Tiwary was dismissed LBW as he couldn’t spot the pink ball which was testing him.

Before troubling Tiwary, Kuldeep had already set the tone by dismissing Robin Uthappa, Parthiv Patel on and Services promising batsman, Rajat Paliwal to add 3 wickets to his name before adding another one in form of Tiwary. The Kuldeep show has cleared the way for India Red and they are driving smoothly on a winning road.

Earlier in the day, the India Red batsman added 142 runs to their scorecard, Gurkeerat being the star with the bat scoring 82 runs before he left his crease to get stumps off Shreyas Gopal. Anureet Singh played a handy inning of 33 not out to increase the lead to 496 runs.

India Green is chasing a target of 497 and they are lying at the score of 217/7. Now there is not much for them in this match as Suresh Raina led team needs a miracle to score that last 280 runs with 3 wickets in hand. India Red has 90 overs to register their first win.

There is no chance of rain today which is a big relief for India Red. One can hope match getting over in the first hour of the day if the day proceeds smoothly.

Here are the highlights of the day –