Deep end brings the best out of battle-hardened Akash

There was something strangely familiar about the sight. Something about the bowler's slimming crown, his energy through the crease, his follow-through. Something about the batter's rushed movements, feet going nowhere, hands going where they shouldn't. And something about that stump, being sent spinning out of its moorings and bouncing halfway to where the leg might have slipped.

It was – or was supposed to be – the 11th ball of Akash Deep's Test career. It could have been a bullet from a Mohammed Shami highlights reel.

The no-ball siren interrupted Akash's celebrations, but he'd get his man soon enough, and the aesthetic appeal of actually firing Zak Crawley would be comparable to that of his near-firing. If you're the kind of cricket fan who prefers the inducker that pops the bail out of its groove to one that hits the post in the gut, you might even rank it higher.

Later in the day, Crawley described the feeling of facing Akash: “A skiddy bowler. More pace than I thought he had. He returned the ball with variable bounce. It was tricky because he made her pinch. It was hard.”

Sliding. Faster than you think. Make him pinch.

India began this fourth Test in Ranchi with a change in their combination from the third in Rajkot, this slippery debutant replacing Jasprit Bumrah, their most influential player in the series and their greatest ever fast bowler by all accounts. measures other than longevity.

From the first hour of play, the beginner ranked among the top three Englishmen. He rounded the wicket to left-hander Ben Duckett and hit him with a ball that straightened up the lane. He came out of the crease and lofted one into the front pad of the advancing Ollie Pope, focusing on the batter's vulnerability to the inward angle. He played at Crawley twice.

All this happened before he had completed his sixth Test cricket.

If it was a dizzying moment for the viewer, imagine what it must have felt like for Akash, all of this happening to him so quickly, with no time to think, after having traveled such a long and complicated path to get to this place. Quite poignantly, this place, the scene of his Test debut, is located roughly halfway between Sasaram, where he grew up, and Durgapur, where he went to pursue his cricket, secretly at first, defying the remonstrances from his parents, then with a sense of desperate determination after losing his father and brother in the space of six months.

“When you lose two elders in your family in one year, you have nothing to lose,” Akash said at the end of the day. “It was with this thought that I left my home. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

Like Shami, like Mukesh Kumar, Akash is not from Bengal but is largely part of it. They are part of a long tradition of successful cricket migrants – other prominent examples include Dilip Doshi, Arun Lal and Rohan Gavaskar – but they also sparked their own tradition. They have moved to Bengal from the powerful Gangetic states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and they are all casting stubborn lines and pinching them.

Mukesh, capped three times in Tests so far, and Akash were competing for a bowling spot here in Ranchi, and it was Akash India that he turned his attention to. It didn't take long to understand why. The pitch at JSCA Stadium had plenty to offer for the new ball from day one, with uneven movement and bounce waiting to be extracted from its uneven turf and uneven crack spread. Mukesh could have got something out of it too, but Akash is just a little quicker and slipperier, and his lines and lengths are a little more likely to harass the top of the stumps.

The sideline replay that confirmed the no-ball at Crawley also revealed a possible source of Akash's ability to rush batters. By the time he touched the ground with his front foot to complete his delivery stride, his right arm had just begun its final rotation. When bowlers seek to gain a yard of pace, they often change their load in order to delay bowling arm rotation and generate greater arm speed – as Andrew Tye explains here. Mitchell Starc, who probably didn't have to try too hard to bowl fast, is known for his delayed bowling arm.

Akash is not a 90 mph runner, but he showed Friday that he can operate consistently in the high 130s and occasionally slip into the low 140s, all while hammering that awkward, awkward length. This combination of pace, length and off-pitch slip meant he often left hitters stranded in the crease. Even the dismissal of the pope was, in a strange way, an example of this. Pope came out of his crease, but Akash's length and inward movement left him in a position often seen in batters stuck in the crease: front leg braced rather than bent, head falling to the side outside.

All of Akash's wickets could have been Shami wickets, and Akash plays like he grew up watching and idolizing Shami, but that wasn't exactly the case.

“In my childhood, I didn’t even know about cricket,” he said. “Where I came from there was no cricket. I started playing tennis [-ball] cricket in 2007 and I started discovering this game in 2016 when I left home to play cricket. Since then, I have been watching Shami bhai and the next, and [Kagiso] Rabada.”

When he figured out what worked for him on this pitch, Akash kept things simple – another echo of Shami. He realized early on that widening the crease was the way to go that day, and he stuck with it.

“When I tried 2-3 balls near the stumps, there wasn't much help, and it wasn't swinging either, after the first three overs,” Akash said. “I started playing from the edge of the crease, trying to play to the outside, but it was a throw and a seam. Everything was happening.”

It was remarkable how much uncertainty Akash continued to create even though he had almost everything moving in one direction. It was enough, with the element of uneven bounce added to the mix when the ball was hard and new and there was a little moisture on the surface, enough for Akash's first out in Test cricket to finished with figures of 7-0-24. -3.

As the moisture evaporated and the ball aged and softened, the pitch seemed to become something else entirely, slow and low and hard work for bowlers of all kinds.

“This wicket has always been slow,” Akash said. “There was help for the fast bowlers when the ball was hard and new, but after lunch, when the seam was not very visible and the wicket was dry, there was no pace in the surface. And even though it was the seam, the batters were getting inside edges and managing. So the option for us was to keep the runs to a minimum. We know that England play cricket with a different formula, so if they succeeded [302] works in 90 overs, that means we played in good areas. “

Akash's new-ball efforts also helped India take seven wickets to take control of the scoreboard, putting them in a reasonable but by no means safe position at the end of the first day. There is still work to be done, but Akash will be more than happy with a terrific first day of Test cricket.

He will also reflect on every step of his journey here and every face that has been a part of it.

“I dedicate this to my father, because he dreamed of his son achieving something in his life,” he said. “I wasn’t able to do anything while he was alive, that’s why I dedicate this performance to him.”