Prasidh joins illustrious pacers' club from Karnataka

Centurion: A year ago, Prasidh Krishna wasn’t sure he was going to play competitive cricket. He prayed. 

Seven months ago, Prasidh wasn’t sure he was going to play One-Day Internationals for India. He prayed. 

On Tuesday, the paceman from Karnataka was handed a Test cap by Jasprit Bumrah. He looked skywards and prayed at the SuperSport Park in Centurion. 

The rise of the 27-year-old, despite his talent, is a surprising one because Prasidh has only played a handful of first-class games for Karnataka. 

To add to all this, he went under the knife a year or so ago to deal with a lumbar stress fracture and was slow to recover. He eventually earned a Twenty20 International debut in August, and In September, he returned to the ODI side, but a Test cap?

“There was no doubt in my mind that he was going to play Test cricket after he debuted in white-ball cricket,” says childhood coach and former Karnataka player P Srinivasa Murthy. “I coached him at the Carmel School in Padmanabhanagar, and by the fifth standard, I knew he would be a quality fast bowler.”

Murthy recalls how Prasidh, all skin and bones at the time, had only one mission: to bowl fast. 

Murthy, a medium pacer himself, didn’t bother setting ‘right’ the youngster’s mindset, asking him to focus on line and length. Instead, he told him to go out there and bowl as fast as he wanted, when he wanted. 

“From an early age, he was very mature,” Murthy reminisces. “He wasn’t childish even at that age, when we told him to work on something, he would. For instance, his landing foot used to splay when he landed, it would be angled towards the slips or towards the point fielder. Ideally, bowlers should land their foot facing the batter. Prasidh worked on it diligently, and now he has such wonderful shape.”

Another piece of advice which Prasidh seems to have worked on came from Dodda Ganesh. The former India bowler, who too made his debut in South Africa back in 1997, had told Prasidh to work on his loading when he was at the Karnataka State Cricket Academy’s camp in 2010. 

“I have always kept an eye on him,” says Ganesh. “He is a wonderful talent. I am always reminded of Glenn McGrath when I see him bowling. That’s one of the reasons why I insisted that he make his (State) debut in 2015.”

Ganesh, who was part of the senior selection committee at the time, convinced then-skipper CM Gautam to include Prasidh in the Karnataka side for a first-class game against Bangladesh A in Mysuru. 

Against a fairly adept and experienced Bangladesh side, Prasidh picked up five wickets in the first innings and ended with six wickets in the game. 

Interestingly, Prasidh was informed of his inclusion only an hour or so before the game started. “I was initially supposed to be the water boy, so I was wearing a full-sleeved T-shirt. I had to borrow a playing T-shirt from one of my team-mates to play the match,” Prasidh had said about his first-class debut. 

His ODI debut against England in Pune had a dash of drama too. “I got a call from the manager, asking me for the size of my clothing. I didn't even know who he was because obviously, I had not been a part of the team. He told me I must travel to Ahmedabad and join the team. After joining the team I waited for the official news of my call-up to be announced by BCCI. The news finally came out on the fifth day of my Covid-19 quarantine, and I started getting all the calls and wishes. The fact that I knew I was in the team when nobody else knew actually kept me nervous. I was thinking, ‘Why is it taking so long to be announced?’ But it was all fun,” he had revealed earlier. 

Prasidh must have been fairly certain of his Test inclusion after skipper Rohit Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid spoke highly of his talents. 

But to receive that cap, to wear the whites for India, to know that South Bengaluru will celebrate another of its residents making it to the highest echelons of cricket, it must feel quite rewarding.