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At this hefty price, Prasidh Krishna was among the costliest specialist pacers in the 2022 IPL auction. It was an eye-raising amount for someone who was yet to prove himself in the competition. Each one of Harshal Patel (10.75 cr), Lockie Ferguson and Avesh Khan (10 crore each) have had multiple memorable performances in IPL before. Krishna’s tally was a touch blank. His record for Kolkata didn’t instill much confidence. He was neither a consistent wicket-taker (30 wickets in 34 games) nor an economical bowler (9.3 runs per over).
16 games later, we have seen a brand new avatar of Prasidh Krishna, almost beyond imagination. He has 18 wickets at 28.4 apiece, exactly 10 runs better than his IPL record prior to this season. His economy has improved from 9.3 to 8.2. In the death overs, he has delivered a wicket maiden while defending a getable target for the opposition. If you want to look beyond the numbers, take the following instance:
In only the previous match, he suffered a forgettable over. Defending 16 in the final over in Qualifier 1, David Miller cracked him for three sixes in a row. He couldn’t find his length and his team missed the first spot in the final. A few days later, he contributed heavily to booking the second spot in the final for his team. That while bowling at the death again. His 19th over where he picked two wickets for 8 runs took the gas out of Bangalore’s innings, putting them down to a below par score. Overall, his figures of 3/22 were the best in the match.
“Special mention to Prasidh. We had 16 to defend in the last game, and three sixes by Miller. It can cause a huge dent in then confidence. But he was honest, he was great in the nets,” said the Rajasthan Royals’ head coach, Kumar Sangakkara resonating the same. It shows both maturity and the willpower to fight back.
It has been a season where the pitches have shown consistent bounce, irrespective of being a sticky track or featherbed for batters. It has complemented Krishna’s modus operandi of rushing the batters. His Instagram handle which goes by “skiddyy” gives you an idea.
Krishna has ridden the trajectory of this bounce by mixing it with consistency. The lanky pacer has delivered 36.1 percent of his overs in the good length area. Off this corridor of uncertainty, he has constantly perturbed batters with the extra bounce. His economy rate from this length is 6.3. He has plucked five wickets.
It was the extra bounce that fetched him the wicket of Virat Kohli to set the ball rolling for his team. Set to cut on the back foot, the lack of room laden with extra bounce nicked Kohli to the wicketkeeper. He pitched only four of his 24 deliveries ahead of the good length.
One of them was a peach of a yorker. It is a delivery he has bowled the least in the tournament - only five percent. On Friday night (May 27), he bowled it just once and uprooted Wanindu Hasranga for a golden duck. It was right after the killer blow of dismissing Dinesh Karthik. The back-to-back strikes surrendered Bangalore’s attempt to get to 170. On Criclytics win predictor, it shifted the game in Rajasthan’s favor by 11 percent. It is the biggest game-changing over of the first innings.
With 18 wickets, he is the third highest wicket-taker among Indian pacers. It has been a season where (nearly) every franchise has produced or nourished a fast bowling talent. Krishna has been that one pacer for Rajasthan Royals. But in a subtle difference, no one is talking about him as a potential candidate for the T20 World Cup squad.
It is strange for two reasons. He has already done well in white-ball cricket for India. Yet to play a T20I, he has picked 18 wickets in seven ODIs. While that hasn’t put him in the pecking order for Australia, it is the channels he bowls in which are perfectly suited for Down Under.
Extra bounce off those areas can turn him into a force to reckon with on the Australian tracks. Teams search for such towering figures standing above 6 feet to bowl in the southern hemisphere. The role is available as well - three overs in the powerplay as a wicket-taker and one at the death or as an enforcer in the middle-overs. When will he arrive on the selectors’ radar is the question. After all, he has justified a price tag of 10 crore in the world's most dynamic T20 league.