The Indian Express ·
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‘Nitish Kumar Reddy is a very fine prospect’: Sunil Gavaskar
"If somebody has got natural talent but he is not applying his cricketing thinking, then he is not going to make much progress," Gavaskar said
Nitish Kumar Reddy looked a bit out of colour in the first T20I, but the tables turned with the ball as he managed to pick up 3/24 in the second game and win the Man of the Match. Every time Shreyas Iyer called him to bowl, he answered, picked up wickets and got crucial breakthroughs.
“Nitish Kumar Reddy is a very fine prospect. When he started in the IPL, he wasn’t much of a bowler then, in that first year before he went to Australia. He was more of a batter. The batting technique was very good. A couple of overs he bowled towards the end of that first season, that’s where he looked as if he could be a very fine all-round cricketer,” Sunil Gavaskar said on Sony Sports.
He emphasised the importance of having fast bowling all-rounders in the side and urged the team management to develop these kinds of cricketers in Venkatesh Iyer and Suryansh Shedge.
“Venkatesh Iyer, Suryansh Shedge – these are all promising all-rounders, and they have to be given the opportunity to develop. Don’t rush them in. Develop them and also at the same time, encourage them when they don’t have a good match,” the former Indian opener said.
“These are the guys you want to keep an eye on. Help them and encourage them to take their bowling also a little bit seriously because they are primarily in the team as batters. Sometimes when you are in the team primarily as batters, you tend to think as batters. If you start to think a little bit like bowlers, they will be absolutely fantastic, and India then has the options,” he observed.
Gavaskar, recalling the first T20I when the Afghan batters targeted Nitish Reddy, said: “In the last match, he gave away 30 runs in two overs. Now he has taken three wickets for less than 30 runs. It just tells you that he has learned from it. That is something that you have got to see,” he said.
Gavaskar predicted a bright future for the 23-year-old.
“If somebody has got natural talent but he is not applying his cricketing thinking, then he is not going to make much progress. You can see with Nitish that he wants to improve every time, and that’s why he has got a great future,” Gavaskar observed.
