After having spent a better part of the last seven years on the fringes, the Haryana legspinner is finally graduating from being a short-format option to an all-weather bowler
Arun Venugopal12-Nov-2016Yuzvendra Chahal has built a reputation of being an efficient T20 bowler in the IPL, but making Haryana’s first XI in the Ranji Trophy was a struggle until recently. He debuted in 2009, but it’s only now that he’s finally getting game time, because the side’s two frontline spinners – Amit Mishra and Jayant Yadav – are away on national duty. The legspinner has grabbed the opportunity and is currently the third highest-wicket taker in the tournament with 26 scalps.”The responsibility of being the frontline spinner is a good thing because I was mostly branded as a one-day and T20 bowler,” he tells ESPNcricinfo. “It was challenging at the start, but there was a lot of self-belief because I have done well from the IPL (he was Royal Challengers Bangalore’s highest wicket-taker this season) to the Zimbabwe tour with the Indian team. The confidence that comes with playing for India shows in your performance. It is also satisfying to deliver for your captain, coach and the team in the absence of our two big spinners.”At the IPL, Chahal has largely been used as an attacking option by Virat Kohli, and he has delivered most times. At the domestic level, however, his challenges have been to remain consistent through the course of long spells, something he hasn’t been used to, but has learnt on the job. Former India legspinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan said on commentary recently that Chahal was among the country’s best legspinners, and praised Chahal for not overdoing his variations. Chahal attributes the disciplined approach to greater “maturity and awareness.””It’s about my line and length again. When you bottle up the scoring, you put pressure on the batsmen because he has to score runs ultimately,” Chahal, who has played three matches or more in a season just once, in 2011-12, explains. “You have to continuously keep bowling on a spot. There comes a time when you know that the batsmen is about to try something, and that’s when you use your variation and try to deceive him.”You can’t try too hard for wickets in [multiple] days cricket because your patience is constantly tested here. For your part, you need to test the batsmen’s patience. First, I need to patiently settle down into a good line and length in my first spell, and then try my variations. Often you go wicketless for 20 overs, but by the time you come to the end of your spell you have five wickets in 30 overs.”Chahal calls IPL 2014, where he picked up 12 wickets from 14 games, a turning point in his career. He followed up that season with 23 wickets in 2015. This season, he was the tournament’s second-highest wicket-taker behind Bhuvneshwar Kumar. “In the IPL, I go for wickets a lot more. If you see, I have been hit for two big sixes, but I’ve come back to get the batsmen out,” he says. “Leg-spinners are by nature wicket-taking bowlers, and that was what I was told to do by my coaches there, although tactics depended on the game’s situation as well.”Chahal is grateful to RCB coach Daniel Vettori for his technical guidance•BCCIChahal’s is a classical action. He hasn’t been intimidated by the small boundaries at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, where his franchise plays its home games, and has instead derived satisfaction at picking wickets despite the obvious disadvantage. “It’s not really about the ground,” he says. “If you bowl well then regardless of the size of the ground you will get wickets, if you bowl badly it will go for a six.”When somebody hits me for a six I don’t look to bowl faster. My strength is to induce the drive by flighting the ball. Virat [Kohli] would support me a lot on the field. It wasn’t like he would get flustered when you are hit for a six; the way he saw it was if the ball went for a six it went off a good ball with the batsmen playing a good shot.”Much of his confidence, he says, is a product of bowling to the likes of Kohli, AB de Villiers, Shane Watson and Chris Gayle in the nets. Frequent conversations with them have helped Chahal get an insight into the minds of world-class batsmen. “Often when you plan what to bowl to them and when they aren’t able to hit you then you know this length is right,” he says. “They would keep telling me if I had to shorten my length or flight the ball more or less. Whenever I bowled to Gayle I would bowl well wide outside off, and work out that if he isn’t able to hit me then I can try this against Warner and the likes.”Chahal is also grateful to coach Daniel Vettori for his technical guidance. “During the IPL, he would immediately tell me when my body was falling over or if my stride was getting longer or if I was rushing through my run up,” he says. “Even recently when I was playing the KSCA tournament I told him about the one or two no balls I bowled. He told me either my stride was getting longer or I was running a touch faster. I communicate with him on Whatsapp all the time.”During the IPL I would watch videos with Vettori sir, Allan Donald sir and Bharath Arun sir and find out a batsman’s strong areas. If somebody plays well through the covers, the idea is to not let him bowl a drive-able length, and for a batsman who sweeps well we would set fields accordingly.”As a result of constantly engaging with the game’s greats, Chahal says there was not much nervousness when he made his international debut in Zimbabwe. He did himself no discredit with six wickets from three ODIs, including a man-of-the-match in his second game, and finished with three scalps in as many T20Is. Chahal says the bonding within the Indian camp made learning a lot more fun.”Mahi [MS Dhoni] would come and we would all play FIFA together [on the Playstation]. Then we would all gather together for dinner and order food from Indian restaurants,” he says. “We also went to watch a movie. So it was a pretty good thing, because we were together not only on the field, but also off it.”Bonding aside, what has he learnt from Dhoni? “Mahi bhai reads both the pitch and the batsmen very well from behind the stumps,” he says. “If I bowled short, he would tell me I could bowl outside [off stump] and vary my pace a bit. If he spotted something he would alert me, ‘yeh batsman kuch karne waala hai abhi’ (The batsman is going to try something now). If I bowl four to five balls well he would say ‘yeh achcha hai, chalne do (this is good, don’t try anything else).”Chahal’s long-term ambition is to play Test cricket, but is aware of the need to turn in consistent performances over a length of time. “There will be lean patches, but it is important to recover from it quickly,” he says. “This is in some ways my first season and I hope I can perform well and take Haryana into the Elite division [Groups A and B]. That’s my primary focus for now.”
