World Cup 2023 | Kuldeep Yadav has reinvented himself, started spinning success stories again Premium

Spin is a difficult art to master, but Kuldeep Yadav has done just that. He has perfected the art of leg-spin, and even the difficult Chinaman, to help India remain unbeaten in the World Cup. He has increased his pace, leaving no room for batters to second-guess, and has even expressed a desire to contribute with the bat. He is in the zone and India can only thank its sporting gods.

 Spin, the art that infuses both meditative and seductive nuances to a whirring sphere, be it red or white, is part of cricket’s infinite charm. If the muscular art of fast bowling taps into our inner cave-man rhythms, not that the speed merchants aren’t into nuance, there is a certain primitive element innate to the sultans of swing.

But the twirly men offering flight, loop, dip and turn, add a certain value to cricket. This is life in slow motion but with its own share of magic. And among the varied segments of spin, wrist-spin, officially known as leg-spin, is a difficult art to master. Leg-spin’s foundation rests on a clean action.

You hardly see a leg-spinner called for chucking and that’s because bowling leg-spin is akin to hurling a discus, wherein the elbow cannot be bent. This is unlike off-spin where the fingers are employed more than the wrist and a tendency to bend the elbow can creep in. Truth is, in real life when we all throw a ball, we bend our elbows to generate pace, that is the natural order of things.

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Discus throw or leg-spin or bowling at large with its emphasis on not bending the elbow goes against muscle memory and whatever athleticism our genes have imparted to us. Even if the ICC has given a fine-print of degrees of permissible bending not ideally seen by the naked eye, bowling without bending the elbow is mandatory.

Leg-spin takes the bending-the-elbow proposition out of the equation, but equally it is prone to a lack of control. The practitioners of this art tend to go for runs while taking wickets; legends like the late Shane Warne and Anil Kumble could be the exceptions but point is even the finest of leg-spinners have been taken to the cleaners. Vinod Kambli once tucked into Warne, a young Sachin Tendulkar waded into Abdul Qadir.

If leg-spin is difficult, imagine the Chinaman, the left-arm leg-spinner! The penchant for errors quadruples and it is in this most difficult skillset that India has unearthed a diamond, rough-cut in the beginning, but finally glowing now with a polished hue. Kuldeep Yadav, with his Kanpur roots and under-19 exploits, was fast-tracked into the Indian squad. And while R. Ashwin ruled the roost in Tests, Kuldeep and Yuzvendra Chahal, a traditional leg-spinner, forged a tango that led to a culinary name – Kul-Cha!