With a leg-break peach, Yuzvendra Chahal makes his county return – The Indian Express

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Featuring in his first county game of the season, Yuzvendra Chahal almost bowled Northamptonshire to a famous win over Kent. After securing a lead of 156 runs on the final, his four-wicket burst had Kent reeling at 135 for eight before Matthew Quinn and Joey Evison stitched 25 runs for the ninth wicket and rescued a draw.
Chahal was the wrecker-in-chief, taking the new ball and trading early blows. Erratic in the first innings, his 42 overs costing 29 wicketless runs, he made up in the second outing, bowling with precision and guile, returning with figures of 30-6-51-4. The pick of the wicket was Ekansh Singh, the number three batsman who he deceived with a pearler.
The flattish ball drifted viciously inward, dropped suddenly and broke away past the timid defensive prod of Singh and disarrayed his off-stump. It’s one of his staple deliveries in red-ball cricket, even though he employs it only sporadically in T20s, relying more on his wrong’uns and sliders. But this IPL has seen a return of his leg-break, which he had been using more lavishly. He goes more round-arm with leg-breaks, which explains the sharp, almost spitting turn he gets. He had bowled a similar peach, more theatrical than the Singh one, to fox Rinku Singh this IPL.
He then returned to consume Ben Compton, caught at square leg playing the sweep, before nailing Matt Parkinson (caught at first slip off another leg-break) and Wes Agar (caught behind of a slider) in successive deliveries to raise hopes of an outlandish win. Chahal enjoyed a profitable yield last season too, wherein he snared 19 wickets from four games, including his career best red-ball figures of 9/99. “I thoroughly enjoyed my time here last season so I’m very happy to be coming back. There are some great people in that dressing room, and I can’t wait to be part of that again,” he had said before the game.
“We played some great cricket towards the back end of the season so hopefully we’re able to replicate that and bring up some victories,” he added.
Head coach Darren Lehmann was chuffed to see him back too: ”I’m really excited that one of best leg spinners in the world is returning to Northamptonshire this season. He brings invaluable experience and he’s an absolute gentleman who loves the game. Having him available from mid-June until the end of the season will be fantastic for us.”
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