In the past few weeks, the buzz around Arshdeep Singh hasn’t been about wickets but about his travel vlogs. He has shown the fans a completely different version of an Indian cricketer, who is doing random things. Whether it’s being a weather reporter in Dharamsala, talking in broken English with his teammates, or taking a swipe at his newly-wed friend Harpreet Brar, Arshdeep has been very refreshing.
In one of his vlogs, Punjab Kings head coach Ricky Ponting got the better of Arshdeep. The left-arm quick asked the Australian legend about his plans post IPL. Ponting revealed his coaching duties with Washington Freedom in the Major League Cricket (MLC) and asked Arshdeep about his plans after the IPL, and quipped, “Are you heading to England?”. Arshdeep just laughed.
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With the team for the five-match Test series and for the A tour set to be announced in a week’s time, Arshdeep Singh has sent a gentle reminder to Ajit Agarkar and co. The seamer was overlooked for the Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia last year but his impeccable consistency in the shorter formats has strengthened his case for at least the A tour. There are some left-arm options in Yash Dayal and Khaleel Ahmed – both were with the team in Australia for some time too – but Arshdeep has been making the right noise for more than a year now.
Who’s that IPL player?
On a chilly Sunday evening in Dharamsala, the 26-year-old probably produced one of the best new-ball spells in this edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). In his three-over spell, he ran through the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) top order with figures of 3-0-10-3.
“For a change, there was movement in the starting overs. I really enjoyed it. In the second innings, the conditions get cold and the weather drops down, and it swings a bit,” Arshdeep told broadcasters after the match.
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Mitchell Marsh was undone by the spongy bounce as he failed to get the elevation and Aiden Markram had no answers for the precise movement both ways. The right-hander poked, missed, bent over, and generally responded like a man at whom knives were being hurled. It was the extra bounce that did the trick again, and the South African dragged the ball onto his stumps.
The dismissal of Nicholas Pooran was something that showed how much Arshdeep has grown as a bowler. Against the right-handers, he hit the good length, barring a toe-crushing yorker to Marsh, but against the southpaw Nicholas Pooran, he went full. After being hit for a boundary, he pinned Pooran with a full inswinger.
On Monday morning, he called his childhood coach Jaswant Rai and asked, “Aur coach saab kaisa tha (How was my bowling)?”
“I burst into laughter. I told him, Arsh, you have elevated your game so much that I can’t coach you anymore,” Rai tells TimesofIndia.com.
“What he showed on Sunday was maturity. Yes, there was juice in the surface, and three years ago, Arsh would have gone for that 3-4m length to get the swing, but now he didn’t. He has learnt the importance of hitting the 6m (good length) in these conditions,” says Rai.
In the ongoing season, Arshdeep has 16 scalps to his name with an impressive economy rate of 8. In white-ball cricket, his real value comes when batters put the pedal to the metal in the last phase of the innings. Arshdeep was one of India’s heroes in the T20 World Cup, the tournament’s joint-leading wicket-taker with 17 dismissals to his name. It was he who bowled the 19th over in their famous T20 World Cup victory and kept things tight, conceding just 4 runs to strangle the South Africans in the title clash.
But coach Rai feels his ward is ready to step up. “Wo pak chuka hai (He is ripe now). He should get a chance to play in the red ball. He can bring the balance that India has been looking for so long,” he says.
With his incredible skill to swing the ball both ways and his dexterity to hit the 6m length consistently, Arshdeep Singh is arguably the best of his type India has had since Zaheer Khan. With three A games before the five-match Test series, the Punjab seamer should at least get a chance to prove himself in the longest format.
