Chest out, veins popping, darting in to bang the shiny red ball as hard as he possibly could, Akash Deep didn't waste a second to be on the money. First ball, 139 kph, on length, with a hint of shape. Deep cranked it up, spraying it wide but quickly corrected his line. More nip, this time straighter, and he beat Ben Duckett's outside edge. Next over, Zak Crawley was a fraction of a second late on an in-dipping ball. Then came the moment beating Crawley's defence with pace and shape, sending the off-stump cartwheeling almost 15 yards. For a good five seconds or so, Deep was living the dream.
Till he heard the no-ball call Anticlimaxes like this can be a telling blow to the psyche of a debutant. The anguish was writ large on his face, but Deep didn't let it mar a spell that pegged England back in the first session.
"When Crawley hit Siraj for three boundaries and a six, I felt bad. I thought maybe my team would suffer because of that no ball. Was a little tense about that," he said later at the press conference. "That's the thing with Akash Deep," said Manoj Tiwary, Deep's first captain at Bengal.
This story is from the February 24, 2024 edition of Hindustan Times.
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This story is from the February 24, 2024 edition of Hindustan Times.
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