BENGALURU: The middle-overs of an ODI match can exist in a vacuum, even within the context of the game in question. It can be as fun as watching paint dry, which is to say not a lot of fun.
It's why people may have missed out on Anshul Kamboj's last five overs. Bowling unchanged from 25th over, he was the epitome of control whose stranglehold severely restricted the capacities of the Kiwi middle-order.
On an admittedly different, slightly two-paced surface at Eden Park, Kamboj stuck to the basics to reap the rewards. 135 clicks isn't express but you marry that with discipline, accuracy on a wicket with something and you know you are on to a winner. It's what the pacer did. In his first ever ODI game — against the West Indies on October 3 — he conceded 82 runs without picking up a wicket from his nine overs. Half a world away, literally and figuratively, Kamboj was the pick of the bowlers as he returned with figures of 2/22 in his 10 overs. In terms of the wickets column, two other bowlers had more wickets (Arshdeep Singh picked four while Gurnoor Brar had three) but the 25-year-old was the one who put the skids on the scoring in multiple phases.
The Kiwi batters tried different ways to send him off-piste but the Haryana seamer maintained his line throughout. Even when he dove into his box of tricks by bowling short, he ensured that there were no loose balls wide outside off stump. That he delivered 46 dots and bowled only one wide across 10 overs tells its own story. In that second spell, off his 30 legal deliveries, he sent 25 dot balls, picked up two wickets and gave away only one boundary. In a phase where the destructive Glenn Phillips was one of the two batters, it's to Kamboj's immense credit that he achieved that. It was the key to restricting the hosts to 185, a total India cantered to in a rain-affected run-chase.
One over, especially, caught the eye: his last and the innings 33rd. He started off with a sequence of short balls before switching to just back of a good length. He closed out his quota of 10 overs with a ball that was full and moving.
Multiple things stand out. Pacers usually don't complete their quota of overs by the 33rd but is this the management identifying Kamboj's traits and deciding that he could be designated middle-overs operator? He doesn't give a lot away, especially on tracks like these. With the World Cup less than a year away, this is one to keep on.
Secondly, Shubman Gill, in the pre-tournament press conference had spoken about needing wicket-takers in the middle overs to stem the flow of easy runs.
"When the ball gets old," the skipper had said, "when there is not much seam or swing movement, then how do you challenge the batter? You can challenge the batter either if there is something in the wicket — if the ball is seaming, then it becomes difficult for the batter to score — or you can challenge the batter with pace and bounce.
"So identifying the kind of bowlers that can make run-scoring difficult for the batters and that can give us the best opportunity to take wickets in the middle overs — that has been the thinking around trying someone like a Gurnoor or a Prasidh, which gives us a bit more than someone who is bowling at maybe 135 (kph) when the wicket is flat.
Kamboj wasn't name-checked by his captain but he stood up at a time when most of India's white-ball seam bowlers are all either protected in cotton wool or having niggles. What also helps Kamboj's cause is that he can give the ball a fair whack, unlike almost all of India's frontline seamers.
If this was a preliminary audition for the 2027 World Cup, it's fair to say Kamboj has advanced to the next round.
Kamboj's last five overs
6th: 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0
7th: Wkt, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
8th: 0, 0, wkt, 1w, 0, 0, 0
9th: 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 4
10th: 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0
