World Cup: How Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja trapped Pakan with their lbw plan | Cricket-world-cup News

When Shardul Thakur’s face flashed on the big screen before the game, a gentle murmur rippled through the crowd. From then on, the game knotted into one question: In the absence of R Ashwin, what would be the plan of Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja in the middle overs on a slightly sluggish pitch, which was going to determine the fate of the game?It crystallised on the second ball of Jadeja’s first over when the umpire upheld a stirring lbw appeal that Mohammad Rizwan had it reversed through DRS. The main aim, almost the sole target for the majority, of the Indian spinners was the lbw trap against Pakan batsmen on a slightly sluggish track. None of the jazz about teasing flight and loop; no real attempt to get the short cover fielder involved for a mimed drive with a vicious dipping ball; no need for the slip fielder to check his vision and hand-eye coordination for a reflex catch from a ripping turner.
It all came down to the lbw. Such was the pitch. New Zealand had already shown what was to be done here under the sun-baked pitch in the opening game of the World Cup. Choke the middle overs with stumps-to-stumps deliveries, let the pitch suck out the fizz and skid the ball on to the stumps. England couldn’t handle; Pakan never looked like they could.

Jadeja’s first ball, the first of the 14th over, actually turned sharply, raising visions of Chennai, but neither Jadeja nor Kuldeep Yadav were blinded the illusion. They stuck to the obvious pre-game plan. As soon as he heard the first ball ripping into KL Rahul’s gloves, Rizwan went for his chief jailbreak response: the sweep. But Jadeja was ready with the fuller delivery that crawled under the bat but didn’t straighten enough to make the DRS replay confirm his conviction that it was hitting the stumps.
The beginning
But the Indian spin script began to flow from then on. Jadeja would twitch with every skidding delivery on the stumps, anticipating an awkwardly-angled defensive chop or the injudicious sweep but Babar Azam and surprisingly Rizwan, too kept the devil out for a while. Rizwan began to punch with a straight vertical bat. Azam, who can be a bit iffy against the left-armers arm-balls, kept pinging the V.
The crowd fanning themselves with pink placards began to wait for the Pakan roof to develop cracks. Ice creams were sucked, the odd “Jai Sriram” was shouted, the giggling laughter that invariably followed such cries ringed the arena, selfies were taken for ‘I was there’ moments. And they waited.

Kuldeep didn’t get big turn but kept punctuating his breaks with the squeezed-out angler that went with the arm, threw in the occasional googly, and Pakan batsmen kept pushing and prodding. The New Zealand vs England game had also revealed another facet: under lights, the ball comes on much better and batting becomes easier. So Pakan can’t afford to play out 20 overs of spin in the middle overs. India had given them an opening not playing Ashwin – so, it wasn’t 30 overs of potential chokehold- but still, runs had to be got against the two spinners.
Rizwan was the first to stir. In the 23rd over, he slog-swept Kuldeep for a four and scooped the next ball to the fine-leg boundary. But the ever-present lbw always hovered. In the 24th over, Jadeja almost skidded on to Babar’s pads, but the bat jabbed down in time; Jadeja brought down his half-raised arms. Next over, Kuldeep had another lbw appeal against Babar after a failed sweep shot, but the DRS upheld it as umpire’s call. The crowd sighed. The Indian spinners didn’t let desperation kick in. The overs kept trickling and when Mohammad Siraj knifed in the first blow with a scrambled-skidder that baffled Babar to crash into his stumps, Kuldeep would deepen the wound with a double-strike in the 33rd over.Most Read
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The left-hander Saud Shakeel was a mute witness to his own fall. The loopy ball had landed on the leg and middle, but Shakeel had frozen, and began his stumbling fall. He stuttered first, then worried about walking into an lbw trap, tried to remove his offending leg out of the way as he began the press back, but forgot to get the bat in the way. Trapped.

Iftikhar Ahmed should have known better. He has the nous, the skill, the temperament to soak up the pressure, deflate the momentum with his doggedness, but it wasn’t that kind of a day. The way he played the fifth ball of the over was telling. It was a regular Kuldeep ball that turned into the stumps, but Iftikhar nearly made a meal out of it. He stuttered, then almost froze, before just about comically producing an awkward stab to keep the ball out of the danger area. Kuldeep flashed a smile.
Inevitable Pakani-ness
What followed next was a mix of inevitable Pakani-ness and luck, bad or good depending on the bias of the onlooker. Just like Rizwan had done in Jadeja’s first over, Iftikhar went for the almighty sweep shot off the next ball. In moments of doubt and pressure, Pakani batsmen can suddenly start mimicking the non-subcontinental batsmen of going for the sweep shot. This was the googly, again not a surprise, but it was well outside the leg stump. Somehow, Iftikhar contrived to glove it back on to his stumps and stood there dazed, unwilling to believe what his ears and eyes told him.

The scenes of panic was enough for Jasprit Bumrah to swoop in for the kill with a peachy slower one, and a wicked leg cutter to stub out any thoughts of late-order revival. But on a pitch, where they had erred in the non-selection of Ashwin, it was the Indian spinners Kuldeep and Jadeja who started the rot and owned the day.