Praveen Kumar is a symbol of many things that are right about Indian cricket
Praveen Kumar is a symbol of many things
By Vidooshak
Praveen Kumar is Madan Lal’s second coming. For us children of the ’80s, nothing is humbling and funnier than Madan Lal running full speed and delivering a military medium-pie. Humbling because he got many vital wickets and never ever gave it away. He never dropped any catches and never threw his wicket away playing ungainly shots. Here was a man that valued every second he spent on the cricket field and gave it his all. His utmost was military medium pies. If God had given him natural speed, he would have devastated the world.
Praveen Kumar reminds me of Madan Lal. He is all heart and lot of guile. But his methods are old-fashioned and simple. Grunt work, effort and more effort. His bowling reminds me of Javed Miandad. Perhaps I’m constantly subjected to the phrase “street-smart” in his context. But watching the first two days of the Lord’s Test match and his bowling in his debut series in the West Indies, I have felt a strange sense of anticipation in every ball he bowls – this from a military-medium bowler who doesn’t even try to bowl any faster. Not since Kapil Dev, have I felt that way when an Indian bowler has bowled.
No good bowler from Javagal Srinath to Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan to Ishant Sharma has generated that feeling since Kapil and Maninder Singh (for brief time). Every wicket to fall almost felt that it was against the grain of play, except in certain furious spells that each of these bowlers have bowled. Anil Kumble was unplayable on spinning Indian tracks and we always knew India would wrap things up. There was no waiting with bated breath, it was a question of how long is it going to take to prise out these non-players of spin.
With Praveen Kumar though, it’s different. It feels that every ball he is going to bowl is a trick ball of some sort that’s going to deliver a wicket. If he gets whacked, it feels like the batsman was lucky to have received a dolly. Every wicket he gets feels like he’s earned it and not been given it. At times, he asks Dhoni to come up to the stumps. It’s clear he’s comfortable in his skin. What fast bowler of any stripe would feel good about the ‘keeper standing up? But not Praveen. He’s ok and in fact, it’s part of his arsenal of tricks.
Praveen Kumar makes military-medium look good. Hope he keeps it up and plays for a long time. If anything, he is a symbol of many things that are right about Indian cricket right now. In this age, where fast bowling is the rage and India is fast trying to unearth the next typhoon, Praveen puts things in the right perspective. It’s not about bowling fast, it’s about getting 20 wickets. He is doing it in style.
(Vidooshak is a blogger @ Opinions on Cricket . He was drawn into cricket by Golandaaz as a schoolboy. His bluster overshadows his cricketing ability. He played as a wicket-keeper in a college team but was promptly dropped. The college selection committee had slightly higher standards than Pakistani selectors. He did reasonably well in tennis ball cricket until he was benched for a final game by the team that he captained. To say some of it was due to his opinions would be an understatement of sorts. Regardless, Vidooshak finds time to opinionate relentlessly and lives a vicarious life by watching cricket teams make obvious mistakes. Good news for Vidooshak is that someone always loses a cricket game, someone always gets belted and someone always flops. Vidooshak always looks for an alternative explanation and rarely agrees with mainstream consensus. Needless to say he has no friends, only ‘tolerators’! While not throwing his weight around, Vidooshak does not run marathons or draw pictures, but reads voraciously on all topics, volunteers at local failing schools, is an avid but average golfer and runs an Indian association in mid-west America)