Wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav has a wonderful relationship with his Team India colleagues Yuzvendra Chahal and Rohit Sharma, and the three have some memorable stories together. When the team was in New Zealand in 2019, Rohit and Chahal pulled off a brilliant prank on Kuldeep.
The group intended to make a short dancing video and post it on TikTok. Kuldeep mentioned that he practised the steps really hard because he wasn’t the finest dancer. But, they didn’t include him in the video while filming.
Kuldeep Yadav spoke about the prank carried out on him by Rohit Sharma and Yuzvendra Chahal on the show ‘Breakfast with Champions:
“We (Kuldeep, Chahal, Rohit) were planning for a dance video on TikTok and we rehearsed hard for it. It was our choreography and our hard work and they removed me from the final video. I was so serious about it because it seemed way out of my league.”
Chahal was there too, and he talked about what happened, explaining:
“If you would have looked at his performance, you would have understood why we removed him (laughs).”
Yuzvendra Chahal shares how he deals with off-days as a bowler.
One of the key reasons Yuzvendra Chahal has been successful as a wrist-spinner is that he accepted that there would be days when he would get hit for a lot of runs.
Chahal highlighted the importance of not focusing on a bowler’s errors, saying:
“I never think about the batter I am bowling to. I believe that a good ball is a good ball to any batter, and if you bowl a bad ball, even a No.11 will hit it for six. When I was smashed for 64 runs in four overs in South Africa, I told myself that what worse could happen from here? Things will only get better.”
Yuzvendra Chahal has become used to bowling on small grounds like the Chinnaswamy Stadium after playing for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for eight IPL seasons.
Chahal adds to his strategy for bowling on such grounds:
“When I get hit for sixes at Chinnaswamy, I focus on the ones which just cleared the boundary. Because those will be out on any other ground. The dimensions are so small that when you reach there you feel, ‘Arey yahaan hum bhi chakke maar sakte hai’ (here even we can hit sixes).”
Chahal won the Purple Cap with the Rajasthan Royals in the IPL 2022 season and is a strong contender for the title again this year.