Even before Suryakumar Yadav faced his first ball in Vizag, against Mitchell Starc, he knew what the first ball would be. It would be on the fuller side of the good-length band, land on middle-and-leg stump, and curl onto his pads. Tossing the ball between his palms, at the top of his Amazonian run-up, Starc too knew what his first ball should be. It should land around
middle and leg stump and bend into the batsman’s pads.
It’s how Starc had nailed Yadav in Mumbai too, and it’s how Starc would nab him in Vizag. It could be how he would twinkle him out in Chennai as well. The trap is predictably simple — distressingly, it applies for most of India’s top order batsmen against in-swing-armed left-arm seam and swing merchants. So much so that in this series alone, Starc’s late-swerving in-swingers have devoured Yadav twice, and Kohli and Rahul once apiece. Of his eight wickets so far in the series, the in-swinger has left its skull-faced stamp on four batsmen.