From Kandy
As the Indian and Pakistani players returned to the field after the main rain break, there was something that caught the eye. Morne Morkel, the Pakistan bowling coach, had brought out a catching mitt. Shaheen Afridi, another towering giant, was standing beside him. And then the duo started to practice. Afridi was aiming to bowl full tosses, alongside the occasional good length delivery. For a few minutes, it was perplexing to watch a bowler try a volley of full tosses. A couple of signals gave away a little bit of information though.
Afridi seemed to be looking over his front arm, and after bowling a few of those full tosses, he was practicing his wrist action. Basically, perfecting the full toss wasn’t the main goal. Instead, he was trying to rectify or rather regain a bit of good muscle memory – wrist action and the resultant inward shape. As a result, he was mostly floating the ball in the air rather than pounding the deck.
Afridi also mixed it up with the relatively shorter length delivery in order to find the right length on a track that was offering some seam movement. Incidentally, before the heavens opened up, Afridi seemed to be a bit switched off with both his length and line.
When play resumed, Afridi was mostly zooming the ball on a good length area, with the occasional delivery pounded short of a length. He soon bagged the prized scalp of Rohit Sharma with a fullish delivery. The essence of the dismissal, however, was the previous two deliveries. Afridi pitched the ball on a relatively fuller length, as Rohit looked to cover for inward movement.
Just that with the track offering some nip, there was a wee bit of natural variation off the deck, as the ball left Rohit to whistle past the outside edge. The batter certainly thought it was coming into him as he played slightly inside the line. In the stands, Virat Kohli had a quizzical look on his face.
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Subsequently, Afridi generated inswing but this time around, the ball carried on its path and rattled the timber. It is always said that it is easier to account for any swing in the air. But to negate the threat of seam movement, the batter needs to depend on educated guesses and small cues. Afridi’s offerings were an example of it, as he found the near-perfect length to take advantage of any movement off the pitch. Afridi also dislodged Virat Kohli and soon India’s batting engine was broken into pieces.
Just a couple of hours before the match started, it seemed as if India had a slight upper hand over their arch-rivals off the field. Indian fans were in sizeable number, and kept chanting – jeetaga, jeetaga, India jeetaga, alongside Bharat Mata Ki Jai. The Indian flag was proudly waved, while some painted the tricolour on their faces. Amid the frenzied atmosphere, Pakistani fans tried to counter it with – Pakistan Zindabad. However, it felt as if the Indian section of the crowd was the bigger of the two.
Even after the match commenced, the ground was mostly filled with the rhythm of the drums and the din created by the Indian fans. Unfortunately for the Indians in the stands, wickets kept falling at regular intervals, and it was their arch-rivals who raised their voice and upped the ante. When Hardik Pandya joined forces with Ishan Kishan at the fall of the fourth wicket, Pakistan held all the aces. The Indian section of the crowd was quiet, and they were waiting for the pendulum to swing back in their favour.
After yet another rain break, the upper-cut essayed by Kishan was an indicator of a slight momentum shift. The Hardik-Kishan duet didn’t just showcase their shot-making skills but also ran the opposition ragged with singles and twos. That aspect of the partnership would have cheered up the Indian think-tank. Simply put, the partnership wasn’t just about batting brawn. As Kishan is a left-hander, he also had an advantage while facing the spin duo of Shadab Khan and Mohammad Nawaz.
Eventually, by the time Kishan was dismissed, he had navigated the side to safer waters. Kishan’s success would have also given a bit of breathing space to the Indian coaching staff as they had backed him to play in the middle order in the absence of the injured KL Rahul. Kishan certainly passed the audition with flying colours.
Meanwhile, in the stands, the Indian fans were again adding a splash of colour with their drums, whistles, chanting and the occasional conch.
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