‘340-plus scores before World Cup don’t count’

Vinayak Padmadeo

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 24

Yuzvendra Chahal wears many hats — leg-spinner, Indian team’s in-house interviewer, entertainer and funny man. Ready for his maiden World Cup tournament, Chahal spoke to The Tribune on a wide range of issues. Excerpts:

This is your first World Cup. Have you set a target for yourself?

I am very excited as this is my first big tournament. Obviously, I want that we should come back with the World Cup, and whatever matches I get or whatever role is assigned to me, I perform well and play a central role in the team’s win.

In the recent England-Pakistan series, teams consistently scored over 340 runs. It seems that the wickets are flat in England, and the World Cup could be a torture for the bowlers.

But it all depends on the condition of the wicket. These days 350 runs are scored everywhere. Last time when we were in England, though they had registered a score of over 400 (481 vs Australia), they couldn’t score that much against us. Whatever is happening now is happening against Pakistan. I don’t think we should read too much in the scores in the run-up to the World Cup. It will all depend on the weather and pitch conditions when the actual World Cup starts, as conditions change everyday.

Tell us something about your partnership with Kuldeep Yadav.

We share a great bond, we know each other since 2012. We bank on each other a lot. We discuss a lot about how we would bowl in a match, we talk between overs as well. But the plan mostly depends on a particular situation, on what is expected of us — whether to go after wickets or just dry up runs. But generally speaking our focus is to take 2-3 wickets in the middle overs to help our team.

The team management has put its faith in wrist-spinners. Your comments?

Both I and Kuldeep are extremely lucky to get the backing of the selectors. And luckily we have reposed that faith as whenever we have played together we have contributed to the team’s cause. It doesn’t matter home or abroad, we have done well as a pair. 

Strangely, your two best bowling figures are outside India, in Centurion (5/22) and Melbourne (6/34). Like you said, you do like bowling outside the Subcontinent!

You feel good when you take a five-for against a good side like South Africa and that too in South Africa. Yes, I take a lot of confidence from the fact that I was effective in foreign pitches as well.

In the last ODI you played, against Australia at Mohali, you conceded 80 runs. How do you recover from something like that?

It is not a big issue, such things happen in cricket. It only becomes a big deal if you get hit like that in five matches out of 10. We know that as bowlers we will have a match where we will be taken for runs. You can’t take five wickets in every other match. After a tough match, we analyse and look for our mistakes. The idea is to move on and ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes in the next one.