Upstaged By An All-rounder: Sam Curran

After BhSam Curran bowled accurately, audaciously astutely and enterprisingly as India stared down the familiar barrel of a limp batting performance...

- Sreelata S. Yellamrazu

One of the things that makes Test cricket so fascinating is that unlike Twenty20 where rarely does one get a full measure of a cricketer, Test cricket actually accords time and space for a cricketer to show the full range of his versatility and demonstrate his capacity for the journey that is a cricket career. When teams pick players who show an appetite for it, it makes the game that much more enthralling as was the case with Sam Curran and England in the first Test in Birmingham.

Arguably the air was distinctively different when the teams compared notes on all-rounders even before the first Test. If anything, there was concern. While there was a real buzz around the twenty year old Sam Curran whose name sounded familiar, there was a lot of nervous fidgeting when Hardik Pandya was mentioned as part of India’s line up. While Pandya has proved himself a worthy component of the Indian Premier League stature, his presence is yet to acquire an aura that sounds dangerous to the opposition, more eminently on a stage as big as the Test cricket format.

SO HOW DID CURRAN DEVELOP THIS REPUTATION?