It was a dream ball that not only Anshul Kamboj would remember for a long time, but the selectors would do well to make a note at least for the next couple of weeks when England host India for the five-Test series. England Lions’ tall left-handed opener Ben McKinney was the victim of the Kamboj special in the sixth over. It landed on a length, just a shade outside leg stump and seamed sharply to blur past the iffy prod and crash into the off stump.
Overall, England Lions had a good day on a batsmen-friendly track, riding on Tom Haines’s hundred to reach 237 for 2, but this is about how the Indians bowled. In an attack that featured Test cricketers Mukesh Kumar and Harshit Rana, Kamboj was miles ahead with his fine exhibition of seam bowling. Shardul Thakur, who earlier hit a breezy 27, was consistent with his lines and lengths, but then he is already in the Test squad. The left-arm spinner Harsh Dubey was pretty decent, getting turn and bounce but his understandable ploy to bowl outside off on a developing rough was later countered by reverse sweeps from Haines (103*) and Holden (64*).
The only thing in Kamboj’s bowling that perhaps makes one wonder a bit is his pace; he hovered around 128-130 kmph mark, making one ponder about the what-if scenario. If he can increase the speed by 6-7 kph at least, his bowling skill definitely stands out. And like CSK coach Stephen Fleming has said before, and going by Lions’s batsmen’s reactions, Kamboj certainly seems to hit the bat harder with his heavy balls.
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It was exactly what CSK captain MS Dhoni too had said recently: “Kamboj is someone who doesn’t get swing, but he gets some seam movement, the ball hits you harder than the speed gun suggests.”
Shuffling towards the stumps with a steady run-up – he doesn’t sprint or slacken – he whips the right arm down with a compact action at release to hit good length to back of length, getting the ball to bounce and seam. The Lions’ top order was all left-handers and Kamboj repeatedly had them in trouble by cutting the ball across them.
He would have had a second wicket too in his first spell had Dhruv Jurel latched on to an edge offered by Emilio Gay. It was another delivery that had bounced awkwardly even as it left the left-hander but Jurel was faced with the trouble that all wicketkeepers face in England – the posthumous wobble after the ball leaves the batsman and late at that, almost as it nears the wicketkeepers, and Jurel clanged it. Kamboj was as effective in his second spell too when he returned in the 26th over to prove that it wasn’t just with the new ball. But he wasn’t given a long run with the older ball.
Mukesh Kumar couldn’t quite get his lengths well, and Rana kept bouncing it far too short and sprayed in lines and he bled runs. Dubey got better as his spell grew, finding turn whenever he targeted the rough outside the left-handed batsmen. He showed the guile to keep varying his lengths and the trajectory of his flight so that the batsmen don’t settle in. And he picked up a wicket when Gay inside edged a sweep onto his pad and it popped up to slip.
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Earlier, Karun Nair duly completed his double hundred though Dhruv Jurel fell on 94, edging a flamboyant off drive off a length delivery. As seen on the first day, Karun’s only moments of trouble came against sharp incoming balls as he was serenely compact against the balls that left him. Finally, a lovely nipbacker from Ajeet Singh Dale had him stabbing one off the inner edge through to the wicketkeeper. Nitish Reddy perished for 7, surprised by the extra bounce from back of length that beat his intended on-the-up punch and took a slice of edge through to the ‘keeper.
