India vs England | Home team call-up young chinaman bowler to nets ahead of first Test

Kuldeep’s performances in the limited-overs leg of India’s tour created a lot of buzz in the cricketing world, especially in England. The southpaw outfoxed the English batsmen with his unorthodox variations and bagged a fifer in the first T20I match. He repeated a similar performance in the first ODI (6-25) and ended up with 9 wickets under his belt in the ODI series.

To tackle the 23-year-old, England had called up Akhil Patel, who incidentally, is the younger brother of England’s left-arm spinner Samit Patel. Akhil expressed his feelings and said that he was happy to help the English team out.

“They called me to join the net session a couple of days back and I am happy to do it. The idea is to be ready for Kuldeep,” Akhil told TOI.

The youngster kept bowling for two-and-a-half hours with inputs from Mark Ramprakash (England’s batting coach) on the areas to hit. While the lower order had difficulties picking the chinaman, Joe Root seemed very comfortable. Speaking of which, Akhil said that Root played him very well.

“Joe Root was playing me quite well,” Akhil added.