Kuldeep Yadav Reveals Steven Smith Asked Pat Cummins To Break His Ribs On Test Debut — Watch

Steven Smith tried to scare Kuldeep Yadav by asking Pat Cummins to bowl a few short deliveries at him on his debut

By: Arun Rawal |
July 10, 2018 4:49 pm

Australian players are known all over the world for sledging during a match. Kuldeep made his Test debut against Australia in the decisive match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at Dharamsala in 2017. Kuldeep dazzled with the ball, taking 7 wickets in the game. The left-arm chinaman created problems for Australians with his variations. However, he faced the music when he came out to bat in the same Test.

Pat Cummins was fired up after two quick wickets of Ravindra Jadeja and Wriddhiman Saha. Australian skipper Steven Smith walked up to him and gave instructions to Cummins, “Bowl in his ribs, so that he can’t bowl wrong ones, make his ribs hurt”.

Kuldeep was bewildered by the sledging as he came out to bat at Number 10. Kuldeep somehow surprised Cummins’ fiery short balls but lost his wicket to Nathan Lyon. He scored 7 runs from 17 deliveries. Out of 6 deliveries Cummins bowled to Kuldeep, three were short length, right under his ribs.

Here’s the video of the What the duck interview —

The 23-year-old also revealed that before the game, the then coach Anil Kumble asked him to take five wickets. After his performance, India’s legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar got in touch with him through stand-in skipper Ajinkya Rahane. Tendulkar said that he would like Kuldeep to take 500 wickets for India in Tests.

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Kuldeep’s performance against Australia has been outstanding. Later in the year, Kuldeep took a hat-trick in an ODI match. The Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) spinner also shared an incident when MS Dhoni lost his cool.

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Dhoni suggested a fielding change, pushing covers to the deep and put a point fielder above. However, Kuldeep thought that the field was okay to which Dhoni got angry and said, “Me pagal hu yaha pe jo 300 One-day khela hu!” (Am I mad here who has played 300 matches?). Ultimately, Dhoni was right as Kuldeep got a wicket.