24-year-old Vidwath Kaverappa is a stickler for accuracy. He admits that he does “try to base his bowling” on Glenn McGrath’s. Like McGrath, he doesn’t have tearaway pace and bowls in the early 130s.
“I know that I don’t have the added advantage of extra pace like Navdeep (Saini). So, I know I have to be consistent and that I have to make the batter’s life somehow difficult. This is why I stick to my line and length, that’s what I’m known for even back home in Karnataka as well,” he said during the Irani Cup match here on Monday.
But he idolises Dale Steyn. He’s even tried to change his bowling action to “semi-side-on” like the South African legend. “But it didn’t work for me. So, I stopped it. I’m a proper front-on bowler,” he says. There is one thing from Steyn that he’s been trying to incorporate, though.
“I know I have the potential to bowl faster. I’m working on it. It’ll come out slowly, you can’t expect me to jump from 130 kph to 140 kph all of a sudden. It’ll come on its own. I’m waiting for it. I know it’ll come some day and that day is pretty soon!”
The one thing that he most admires in Steyn is his run-up. “His run-up is one of the most beautiful, most smooth, rhythmical run-up I’ve ever seen!”
When suggested that he too has a visually pleasing smooth run-up, he says: “I try to base it on his (Steyn’s) run-up. It’s not as smooth as his, but I’m trying to work on it.”
It could be said that Kaverappa has been fast-tracked into the Karnataka State squad.
“I used to go bowl to the senior team whenever they used to have their nets. All of a sudden Prasidh (Krishna) was drafted into the Indian team. They gave me a call, and I didn’t know what was happening and I just went with the flow.”
