While Indian pace-bowling has gradually improved with the time progress, now they are not only bowling very well, but they are also dominating and evolving as the match winners for the side. Former Indian pacer Venkatesh Prasad recently praised the present Indian pace-bowling unit. The 50-year-old feels that the present Indian fast bowling unit is the best pace-bowling unit in Indian cricket history.
Former Indian right-arm medium-fast bowler Venkatesh Prasad served the national team from 1994 to 2001, where he played 33 Tests and 161 ODIs and picked up 96 and 196 wickets respectively.
Prasad has been impressed hugely with the current Indian fast bowling skills. While the present Indian pace bowling line-up has Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar etc., their combination has sorted up a powerful pace-bowling side. Prasad lauded everything of these Indian pacers, including their bowling skills and fitness.
Prasad recently told Sportskeeda, “They have got speed, fitness, swing, variations – they have change of pace, they have yorkers, they have bouncers. I think this is the best fast bowling attack India has ever had.”
Prasad further pointed out the availability of the good number of talented pace bowlers in the present Indian cricket system.
He added, “It is not just one or two or three or four. There is a fifth and sixth bowler. The talent pipeline is brilliant. I don’t think the team is dependent on just one or two players. On a whole, every single one has got enormous talent.”
Venkatesh Prasad opened up why the bowlers got very lesser opportunities to lead the national side
Like the other top cricket members, the Indian cricket also hardly follows to allow a bowler for the leadership role. However, Prasad doesn’t feel any problem with this as he believes that the captain has been chosen according to their leadership qualities, just like Kapil Dev and Anil Kumble were appointed as the captain in the past of the Indian national cricket team.
Talking about giving lesser leadership importance to the bowler, Prasad also admitted that the bowlers might find tougher to always put their focus on the field replacements.
Prasad claimed, “See, it has nothing to go with being a bowler or batsman. Probably why I think they tend to choose batsmen is only because, look as a bowler one is you got to bowl there and top of that you get tired, physically and mentally. And then you have to be thinking of the other bowlers, the bowling changes, the field placements and so on. That puts more pressure on the captain if he happens to be a bowler.
“But if somebody has got good leadership qualities I don’t think it matters if he is a batsman or bowler. But Kapil Dev and Kumble handed it really well.”