Former Indian fast bowler Zaheer Khan showered praise on Kuldeep Yadav for bowling a fine spell on the opening day of the fifth Test match against England at Dharamsala on Thursday. Kuldeep bagged his fourth five-wicket haul, returning with impressive figures of 5-72.
Ergo, Kuldeep played an instrumental role in skittling out the visitors at 218 after Ben Stokes won the toss and decided to bat first. The left-arm spinner also became the quickest spinner to clinch 50 wickets. The left-arm spinner took just 1,871 balls to reach 50 Test wickets.
Kuldeep struck in his very first over as he dismissed Ben Duckett when Shubman Gill took a fine catch running back.
Subsequently, Kuldeep bamboozled Ollie Pope with a wrong one when England’s vice-captain advanced down the wicket but was stumped by Dhruv Jurel at the stroke of lunch.
After the break, Kuldeep bowled Zak Crawley with a delivery, which turned 10.9 degrees. Furthermore, Kuldeep accounted for Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow.
Zaheer Khan said he would rate Kuldeep’s performance as 15 out of 10.
“I won’t say no if you want to give him even 15 or 20 because it was a day like that for him. You need to be praised if you give such a contribution on the first day of a match as a spinner. The England batters did not have any idea, whether the ball was coming in, going out, or if it was a straighter one,” said Zaheer on JioCinema.
“If you are not even able to figure that out as a batter, you will definitely have problems whether there is help from the pitch or not. Kuldeep caused those sort of problems for the England batters,” the former India pacer added.
The former left-arm seamer added that Kuldeep will remember this day for a long time.
“He will remember this day for a long time. He also made his debut here. So you can add a good performance to that. So Kuldeep will definitely include this ground in his special grounds,” said Zaheer.
India are currently 202-1 and they trail by only 16 runs.
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