India is leading the Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2023, by 2-1 against Australia. Men in Blue needs to win the last test match of the series to qualify for World Test Championship (WTC) final, while the visitors have qualified for WTC in England after avoiding a clean sweep in four test match series.
Veteran pacer, Umesh Yadav played the third test match of the BGT at Indore, He performed astonishing well in the turning square wicket with three crucial wickets in Australia’s first innings, the 35-year pacer showed why he is the best among all with the pace and reverse swing.
Dinesh Karthik feels that Umesh has always been overlooked on the Indian side-
“You have to understand his roots. He is a coal miner’s son, tried being part of the police academy,’
“That did not work out and then he went into fast bowling and his growth rate at that stage, from 2008, when he started playing for Vidarbha, he made it to the Indian team in 2010, that’s a growth fast rate. Then he kept going still a certain point and the plateaued. When it happens to any cricketer, you feel hard done by. He is no different and he must have felt sad,” said the veteran Indian wicketkeeper.
DK, formerly known as Dinesh Karthik was speaking to Cricbuzz on their ‘Rise of New India’ show, in that program cricketer cum commentator traced back Umesh Yadav’s journey to the Indian side.
“When you have an attack like Bumrah and Shami, the third one was always between Ishant and Umesh and a lot other times it would be Ishant, Shami and Umesh. But when they played two medium pacers in India it became Ishant and Shami at times,” he further added.
What a peach from Umesh Yadav to reach 100 Test wickets at home.
An absolute gun pacer at home! pic.twitter.com/rG6EkP8Un4
— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) March 2, 2023
Umesh made his debut in 2011 for Men in Blue and was seen as India’s find for a pure fast bowler search. He slowly climbed the ladder but got hidden around another Indian pacer’s limelight. At the Indore test ‘the ‘Vidarbha express’ became the fastest Indian pacer to take 100 wickets on home soil in terms of strike rate, he broke Kapil Dev’s record with that achievement.
“He was always overlooked at times and that must have really hurt him because every time he came in he produced a two or three-wicket performance but was never good enough to hold on to that place. You know he was thrown out…I think the hardest time was when he was unsold at an auction. That must have hurt him really bad,” said DK on Yadav’s work ethic.
The Nagpur-born cricketer got unsold on the first day of the IPL 2022 auction but later was roped in by his former team KKR at his base price. He performed in the last edition of the IPL extremely well with 16 wickets in 12 matches.
Yadav came in the place of Mohammed Shami in the last test match, for the fourth and last test match of the series, the ‘Vidarbha Express’ will likely be in the playing XI after the last match performance, Rohit Sharma-led side will take on Australia for the fourth test match of BGT at Ahmedabad on 9th March.