Often criticised for not bowling consistent yorkers like his younger fast-bowling counterpart Jasprit Bumrah, Indian pacer Umesh Yadav says his action is more suited for full length outswing deliveries
Umesh Yadav
New Delhi: Often criticised for not bowling consistent yorkers like his younger fast-bowling counterpart Jasprit Bumrah, Indian pacer Umesh Yadav says his action is more suited for full length outswing deliveries.
Jasprit Bumrah. Pic/ Suresh KK
"I know a lot of bowlers are judged by their ability to bowl yorkers at the death. I can also bowl yorkers effectively but it is a delivery that can go wrong as it is difficult to bowl consistently," Yadav told PTI during an exclusive interaction.
"There would be days when the length would be wrong. The advantage for Jasprit (Bumrah) is that his action is natural when it comes to bowling yorkers while my action means that my stock ball will be outswinger," he said.
Yadav, over the years, has always said he would not compromise on pace for line and length as speed is one area which is non-negotiable for him.
"It has taken years of hard work to work up a fair level of pace at which I bowl my deliveries. It is my endeavour to get it right at this pace and if you ask me, my consistency has at least improved by 20 percent in past one year. That's my assessment.
"If I become a line and length bowler, then one thing is for sure that I will never ever gain the earlier pace back. You can increase speed but after decreasing speed, you can't get the original pace back," said Yadav, who has played 17 Tests and 57 ODIs and a T20 Internationals.
While his stock ball is outswinger, Umesh said he is now more confident of his ability to bowl the inswingers to right-handed batsmen.
"My inswinging deliveries have got better and I am more confident while executing them. But yes, I would not deny that there are times my deliveries drift down to the leg-side in my bid to bowl the incoming deliveries.
"An effective inswinger is that which starts from the imaginary fifth off-stump and shapes into the off-middle region. If we start from off-middle region, the delivery invariably swings towards the leg-stump and becomes easy meat for the batsmen."
With demands of three formats, Yadav feels that managing the body becomes very important especially during the IPL, where the schedule is interspersed with travelling on every second day.
"During IPL, there are times that the muscle tissues tire due to frequent travelling and playing matches. The recovery for a fast bowler is very important."
He has played 9 matches for Kolkata Knight Riders this year taking 10 wickets but termed his season an "average one" so far.
"Actually, I started well in the IPL and felt that it was going well for me till the RCB match in Bengaluru where I went for a lot of runs (56 in four overs). Actually T20 is such a format that it is impossible that you won't get hit. But hopefully, I would be at my best in the coming games," concluded the Vidarbha paceman.
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