Kuldeep Yadav bowled a lot of different deliveries: Matthew Wade

Amidst the beautiful mountains of Dharamsala, the final of the India vs Australia Border-Gavaskar Trophy went underway on a clear morning. It wasn’t a great start to the day for India as skipper Virat Kohli was ruled out, but this proved to be the game for Kuldeep Yadav. The chinaman was awarded his maiden cap as the team decided to go in with an extra bower.

Chinaman is a rare breed of bowlers and Kuldeep is the first ever to play a Test for India. He was brought in the attack after the David Warner-Steve Smith partnership got off to a flying start despite an early blow in the form of Matt Renshaw. Warner got to his half century, the first for him in the series but lost his wicket soon after.

Kuldeep bowled a beautiful delivery that induced an edge and was pocketed by skipper Ajinkya Rahane in first slip. Smith scored a hundred and placed Australia in a decent position but the 22-year-old bowler made strong inroads that didn’t let the Aussies get the runs. He dismissed Peter Handscomb and Glenn Maxwell with beauties.

Australia were soon looking up to the lower order to get them some runs and wicketkeeper-batsman Matthew Wade responded with a fifty. He played his shots and with Pat Cummins sticking around for a bit ensured he helped them towards 300. Eventually, Kuldeep finished with four as the Aussies were bowled out for exactly 300 runs in the first inning.

After the end of the day’s play, Wade said that it wasn’t easy to read the Indian chinaman. “Yeah, it took a couple of balls to get used to it. He bowled a lot of different deliveries. He bowled a lot of leg-spinners with the scrambled seam, he’s wrong’un was with scrambled seam as well. It took a few balls to get used to it, but once you stayed out there a little while, you got a read on him,” he said.

The Kanpur lad was making his debut but the Aussies had studied his bowling and knew what he could do, that, though, didn’t completely decode him. “Yeah, we have a look at everyone before the start of the series, so the boys are on top of what he was going to bowl.”

It’s different when you get out onto a game scenario, especially the way the wicket was going to play and what’s going on out there, but yeah, everyone has had a look at his footage and he bowled quite well today,” Wade said.

Batting first in India, you are always expected to post a huge total on the board and the kind of start Australia had should have got more than 400 runs once again, but a slide in the last two sessions ensured they restricted well under that. “Yeah, I suppose a little bit. 140 for 1 after lunch, you would hope to push on but credit to the Indians.

“They bowled really well through the middle session and we have to find a way to grind out 300. I thought to get there in the end was a good effort,” Wade said.