Irfan Pathan stunned Adam Gilchrist and the world with his unplayable inswinging yorker

A 19-year-old Indian pacer, on the tour of Australia, in the fag end of the day bowling at a legend comes over the wicket, produces a peach and the rest, as they say, is history. Irfan Pathan was all 19 years of age when he was picked in the Indian squad for the daunting tour down under. It was his ability to swing and reverse the ball that got him a lot of attention very early in his career.

He was bowling left-arm swing at a medium pace and the man at the other end was Adam Gilchrist who had worked on his defensive game and was determined to deny India any success. Australia were in a worrisome situation at that point, 5 down for 341 in response to India’s 705/7 decl. Irfan had been bowling around the wicket on Sachin Tendulkar’s insistence who was trying to see if anything can upset the rhythm of the Aussie. He tried that for a bit and then asked the senior pro if he should switch back to over the wicket as he had a feeling something might happen.

The ball was reversing and Irfan wanted to pitch it full, to give it the best chance to swing late and get the better of the batsman. That’s when he produced a dream delivery. It was 134kmph on the speedometer but Gilchrist had no clue where it was going. It left Pathan’s hand and swung back in like a missile that was sent out to hit a target. Bullseye. It moved really late and the length of the delivery made it impossible for the batsman to tackle it.

Gilly had already committed to playing it on the front foot and as the commentator described he let his attacking instincts take over. The ball was nowhere in his hitting zone, in fact, it was well on course to crash into the root of the stumps, it went past his bat and sneaked into the gap between his pads and thumped into the wood. Gilchrist heard the sound and he knew his bails were off for some air time and didn’t even bother to turn back.

The commentators enjoyed themselves describing the delivery and one of them expressed that if a batsman had to be knocked out it is best to get out to such a ripper.

Watch the video of this amazing dismissal here:

SATURDAY SEED

There wasn't much Adam Gilchrist could do about this ripper from Irfan Pathan! pic.twitter.com/Ih2tkFfZ4l

— cricket.com.au (@CricketAus) June 23, 2018

Later in his career describing that moment, the left-arm pacer had said, “I bowled that ball really full, trying to go for the yorker and it went nicely. It was like a dream ball. It went exactly the way I wanted it to from the hand and also in the way it pitched and moved late as well. It was a very special delivery and very close to my heart,” Pathan told FirstPost in an interview.

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