Delhi Capitals’ Tristan Stubbs has claimed that Kuldeep Yadav has refused to bowl to him in the nets during the ongoing IPL 2024 season.
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Speaking on The Grade Cricketer podcast, Stubbs revealed Kuldeep “won’t bowl to him” in the nets despite him repeatedly trying to convince his IPL teammate: “He won’t bowl to me. I’ve tried to go face him a few times. He won’t bowl.”
Stubbs believes the wrist-spinner wants to preserve his “mystery” as a bowler in case India pit against South Africa in the 2024 T20 World Cup. “I think he is trying to keep it a mystery. But I’ve tried to face him. He is not having it,” Stubbs said.
Delhi Capitals x TGC. Full video with Tristan Stubbs, Jake Fraser-McGurk and Kumar Kushagra now live on YouTube@ACKOIndia @DelhiCapitals pic.twitter.com/A35cgwSzy0
— The Grade Cricketer (@gradecricketer) May 11, 2024
Stubbs has been in sensational form in this year’s IPL. From 12 matches, the explosive middle-order batter has scored 318 runs at 53 while striking at 188.17, including two half-centuries.
Interestingly, Kuldeep is not the only bowler who has kept his bag of tricks a secret for the sake of the national team. In 2021, a similar funny anecdote narrated by Daniel Christian revealed how New Zealand’s Kyle Jamieson refused to bowl to Virat Kohli in the RCB nets after the latter realised the bowler was carrying a couple of Dukes balls to train with them ahead of the 2021 WTC final.
“I have actually got a couple of Dukes balls in my bag. I’ll keep them up my sleeve if the guys start to thump me around”, Jamieson said in the podcast.
Christian then mentioned an interaction with the two players. “It was pretty cagey from Virat actually in the first week we were here,” Christian said.
“The three of us were sort of sitting down in the nets and these two [Jamieson and Kohli] were talking about Test cricket. Kohli asks Jamie if he has bowled much with the Dukes ball and Jamieson says, ‘I have a couple of ’em here and I’ll have a bowl here leading up to it’. And Virat says, ‘Oh, if you want to bowl at me in the nets, I’m more than happy to face.’ Jamie is like, ‘no chance I’m gonna bowl at you in the nets!'”
Coincidentally, Jamieson dismissed Kohli in the final, which New Zealand eventually won.
