Left Arm Fast (Medium)
I enjoyed the late nineties. It was a simpler time. Cricket was life and life was cricket. No one obsessively took pictures of their food, and players took the umpire’s word for it when a dodgy LBW decision went against them. There was no DRS, no HawkEye, no Snickometer and no Hotspot technology. Virat Kohli was all of 11 years old. India and Pakistan could tour each other’s countries. Sri Lanka and India played way too frequently and Sachin Tendulkar was revered as God’s gift to mankind. Because some things don’t change. In February 1999, a lanky left-arm seamer made his debut for India. He looked awkward in his run-up and awkward at the crease. It looked like he was struggling to keep his limbs from flailing in a hundred different directions at once, and I suppose he hoped that just for a moment, they'd cooperate with him to deliver that piece of leather and cork to its destination somewhere on the pitch. It was almost painful to watch and yet, deliver it he did. He was...