Akash Deep gives sister, country 10 reasons to smile

Hindustan Times

a day ago

New Delhi: No Jasprit Bumrah, no Mohammed Shami and a pitch on which the Indian batters made over 1,000 runs. None of that mattered as Akash Deep and the other bowlers produced a performance that should rightfully be counted as one of India's best to help the team record its first ever win at Edgbaston on Sunday. India's Akash Deep celebrates after taking the wicket of England's Brydon Carse to win the match on Sunday. (Reuters)
The record at the venue now reads nine matches, seven lost, one drawn and one fabulous win. As Shubman Gill said before the game, they don't care about what has happened before. They've made some history of their own. A first win for India and a first win for Gill as Test captain.
Gill's team has also become the first Asian country to win a Test at Edgbaston. Asian teams (India 9, Pakistan 8 and Sri Lanka 2) have played a total of 19 Tests at this venue and that is something.
India needed a bit of magic in this second Test and it was provided by Deep (4/88 and 6/99) and Mohammed Siraj (6/70 and 1/57) in equal measure. The 336-run win, the largest (in terms of runs) for India in away Tests, will be remembered for Gill's marvellous batting, but it was the bowlers who made the result possible.
The sight of Deep — running in hard, landing the ball on a coin, hitting the cracks, getting movement (where England and almost every other bowler found none) — will stay with all those watching forever. He took 10 wickets in the match, becoming only the second Indian bowler to achieve that in England – Chetan Sharma, also at Edgbaston in 1986, was the first, taking 10/188 in England.
But this was a spell that was powered not just by rhythm and smarts but heart as well.
'My sister has been diagnosed with cancer and the last two months have been very difficult,' Deep revealed soon after he took the final wicket. 'I will dedicate this match to her. I want to see her smile and hope this helps. Every time I ran in to bowl, I saw her face in my mind.'
The manner in which he used the angles, the lines he bowled and how he set up the batters speaks volumes about his clarity of thought. He seemed to instantly understand what he needed to do and how he needed to go about it.
Much of what the 28-year-old learned on his journey into the Indian cricket team from Sasaram in Bihar was brought into play here. His hunger was driven by how he made his journey, against the wishes of his parents, from Bihar to Bengal, his accuracy honed in the tennis ball tournaments around Durgapur and Asansol while his bowling instincts were sharpened by labouring on tracks tailor-made for batting.
Speaking to the broadcasters on Saturday, Deep said, 'when I landed here, I thought there would be swing and seam movement, but there wasn't. Yeh log aise hi wicket banate hain, yeh run-wala Test cricket khelte hain. (These guys make these kinds of wickets, they play run-making Test cricket).'
In a way, he felt right at home. According to CricViz, there have only been three pitches flatter than this one in England since 2005, and that England could survive just 160 overs on this sort of surface was the death blow.
'I have played a lot on such wickets,' said Deep while speaking to JioHotStar after the game. 'I wanted to bowl good line and length in the right areas. I was trying to hit the wicket hard.
'As you could see Joe Root and the manner in which he was set up. I bowled straight to him for a while and then I went wide and fired it in. The ball did exactly what I visualised it would (to bowl Root on the fourth evening).'
If he attacks the stumps more than others, it is because that is what he knows. In that sense, he is closer to Shami than to Bumrah. Five of his 10 dismissals in the Test were either bowled or leg before, and with the new ball, he was deadly.
With England resuming the day on 72/3 and the start being delayed due to rain and a wet outfield, Day 5 was never about the hosts going for a win. It was instead about them trying to bat out time — something that this Bazball team isn't used to at all.
'I don't think about getting opportunities, but when I get an opportunity, I think about making that count for my team,' Deep said, and he was true to his word.
He claimed two early wickets on Day 5 — surprising Ollie Pope with one that seemed to hurry off the wicket and then getting one to jag back wickedly to trap Harry Brook leg before — to set up the win.
As Gill said after the game, 'He (Deep) hit the right lengths and was getting the ball to move both ways, which was difficult on a pitch like this. He was magnificent for us.'
So good were India's bowlers that England skipper Ben Stokes felt that the pitch 'as the game got deeper and deeper, it suited India more than us.'
And perhaps that is where England would need to rethink their pitch plans. Since January 1, 2017, no country has had a better bowling average (24.82) than India. If the team hadn't won more, it was largely due to the batting, which in the same period has averaged just 25.37 in SENA countries.
But by rolling out a flat batting track, England have allowed India's batters to get going and when that happens, the bowlers rarely ever disappoint.