Of the India A bowlers who bowled on day two against England Lions, Shardul Thakur and Nitish Kumar Reddy are the two who are in the Test squad and in contention for that one spot of an allrounder in the series against England. It does seem that Shardul is ahead in that race, and it’s perhaps worth viewing Day 2’s play through the prism of this pair’s performances. Both bowled just six overs apiece but there were a few interesting nuggets that caught the eye on a day where England Lions reached 192 for 3 in response to India A’s 348.
Shardul might be the new-ball bowler for Mumbai, but it’s clear that he is pitching as the fourth bowling option in the upcoming Test series in England, and that’s how he has bowled in the two warm-up games. Here too, he first came on to bowl in the 13th over, as the fourth seamer, and bowled six straight overs. Nitish came much later, in the 35th over and he too bowled six at a stretch before bad light ended the day’s play early.
In the past, Shardul can occasionally end up bowling a wide assortment of deliveries in his pursuit to take wickets. Here, on Day 2, he largely stuck to a very tight pressure-building approach, quite ideal for a potential allrounder option in Test. Not that he didn’t try – that’s his bowling soul, but a visible effort was seen in maintaining tight lines and lengths.
Faced with a left-hander-dominated England Lions batting line-up, he kept trying the off-cutter to seam the ball away. He didn’t attempt the floating out swingers (inswinger to the lefties). He went round the stumps and cut the ball away. His is the classical technique: the seam faces the slip cordon to the left-handers, his fingers are placed, cutting right across the seam towards leg slip, say, and then it cuts right across at release. Resultantly, the away-cutter to the lefties doesn’t swing, but hits the deck and seams across. Intermittently, he kept bending his back for the bouncers, and even with those, he was trying to cut them away from the left-handed batsmen. He beat the bat a few times, but in general it was a nice compact tight spell, bowled at 77-79 mph.
Nitish, who had inexplicably shouldered arms to a nipbacker from Tom Haines that bowled him for 37 on Friday, bowled a spell where he tried everything. That’s his bowling soul that was visible on the Australia tour as well. There were full deliveries, where he tried to backspin on the seam of the ball to see if he could swing. There were the nip-backers to the right-handed Jordan Cox; he kept trying to cut his fingers across and finally, incidentally off the last ball he bowled on the day, got the ball to seam in appreciably, much to his undisguised delight. A short while earlier, he had even slipped in a very good inswinging yorker to Cox. With left-handers, he did the round-the-stumps routine of Shardul. Essentially, there was an assortment of deliveries bowled with an imagination to match.
The offspinner Tanush Kotian bowled 7 energetic overs, trying his best to trap the left-handed Emilio Gay lbw and eventually succeeding though it did seem that particular delivery might have slipped down leg, as it kept going from the round-the-stumps angle. Left-arm pacer Khaleel Ahmed got the most movement through the air, though the swing was perhaps a touch too early in the trajectory to force any issues for the batsmen. Tushar Deshpande kept trying to hit a really full length, looking for swing, and gave a few runs before he hit a length to induce a nick from the well-set Haines. Anshul Kamboj yet again impressed with 11 fine overs (operating around 78-80mph), where he got the ball to seam away or at least hold its line from round the stumps to trouble all left-handed batsmen.
