Earmarked as a promising star, Prasidh Krishna had an ordinary start in Test cricket, but his heroics at the Kia Oval should show he belongs.
Five years ago, Virat Kohli, whose love affair with quicks is well known, pointed to a lanky, hit-the-deck fast bowler from Karnataka as someone with a bright future: Prasidh Krishna.
The reasoning was evident. Prasidh's height, along with a high-arm action and a natural lift, helps him extract steep bounce and seam movement. He has the skills to bowl 140kmph consistently, and is a rhythm bowler, with a smooth run-up and a delivery action. When paired with control, that pace could be threatening. But as India leaned on the established trio of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, and Mohammed Siraj in Test cricket, Prasidh’s debut remained on hold.
It eventually came in Centurion at the end of 2023. The long wait brought expectations, but the debut was underwhelming. He leaked 93 runs in 20 overs in South Africa’s imposing first-innings total of 408, struggling for momentum. In the next match in Cape Town, he was used sparingly, sending down just eight overs, of which four came in the second innings, going at 6.75 per over. It led to another long wait.
It wasn’t until the Sydney Test in early 2025 that he returned, and it was a game he had to step up right away after Jasprit Bumrah was ruled out mid-way due to injury. Prasidh began erratically but quickly adapted, pitching the ball slightly fuller to find swing and control. The dismissal of Beau Webster, drawing him into a false stroke with a delivery that climbed from a probing line just outside off, stood out as he finished with three wickets in the innings, and alongside Siraj, helped bowl Australia out for 181.
Yet, in England, across the first two Tests, Prasidh’s lengths again came under scrutiny, as he conceded runs at 5.33 an over, picking up six wickets at 55.16. In the first Test, of the 210 balls he bowled, just 24 landed in the good length zone (6-8 metres), according to ESPNCricinfo. In contrast, Bumrah and Siraj bowled nearly half their deliveries there. Instead, Prasidh’s deliveries hovered in the short-of-a-length region. He bowled 51 balls in the 8-10m band, which fetched only one wicket while going for 53 runs. In the 10-12m zone, which is neither short enough to trouble nor full enough to challenge, he gave away 34 runs in 17 deliveries.
When he went for the proper bouncer (12-14m), the rewards were immediate: two wickets in 11 balls. But he was far too inconsistent, and with another ordinary outing at Edgbaston, he was dropped for the next two Tests.
Bumrah’s absence for the fifth Test at The Oval offered him another chance. It felt like a rare window, perhaps the last one for a while. India’s first-innings total of 224 left them with little margin for error, but England’s openers seemed to run away with the game - and the series. Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett scored 92 in just 12 overs, as all three seamers, Akash Deep, Siraj, and Prasidh, struggled to settle into the right lengths, with the ball often pitched too short to threaten in English conditions. Prasidh, brought on first change, conceded 23 in his opening three overs, as his natural length, which forces him to bowl shorter than ideal in English conditions, proved costly again.
It is a problem he had acknowledged after the first Test. “Not wanting to float it up there [Headingley] is definitely one of the reasons [for being expensive]. If I look at the first innings, I was a little too short than where I wanted to be," he said. "Definitely, 6-8[m] is ideal. That's what I would say. I did not bowl the lengths that I wanted to."
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He also worked on getting his lengths fuller at the nets without floating the ball, and it must have been the conversation in the dressing room during lunch with bowling coach Morne Morkel. After the break, the change was evident. Prasidh began to hit a more threatening length, combining upright seam with a noticeable increase in wobble-seam deliveries, a tactic less visible in his earlier outings on this tour. He broke through by drawing Crawley into a false shot outside off, after building pressure with a string of dot balls. He had a brief moment where he lost concentration after having a go at Joe Root - hands up for thinking the two, otherwise reserved, would be involved in a heated head-to-head before the series began - but reset quickly.
He dismissed Jamie Smith next, nicked off to KL Rahul, who latched onto a sharp catch. Jamie Overton, dismissed in the same over, was set up well: the first ball angled in on a good length, the next two were shorter balls that jagged back in, and the fourth nipped back in to strike the pads. Later, he returned to remove Gus Atkinson, having shortened his length initially before going slightly fuller. Atkinson failed to middle the pull, as England’s innings came to a close with a lead of 23 runs.
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At the end of the day, it was Siraj’s lion-hearted four-for that drew attention, but without Prasidh’s 4 for 62, England might well have taken the game beyond India. With only three seamers in the XI and Siraj nearing the end of an eight-over spell, India needed breakthroughs before the spinners were brought on. Prasidh stepped up, adjusting his lengths and conceding at just 3.90 an over, the only Indian bowler to go at under four.
It wasn’t the kind of spell that grabs headlines, but it was a defining one, not just for India, but for him as well. Prasidh’s Test career had so far been marked more by struggle than stability, but at The Oval, under pressure and in a situation where he had to make technical tweaks, he found himself bowling like he finally belonged.
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