Vijay Hazare Trophy | My stock ball is the out-swinger, one that comes in is not on purpose, reveals V Koushik
After a stellar performance in the Vijay Hazare semi-final, V Koushik has revealed that his stock ball is the one that goes away and that the balls that come in off are the surface’s own doing and not intentional from him. Koushik picked up four for 46 in 9.4 overs to restrict Chattisgarh to 223.
In the end, KL Rahul’s anchor innings of 88 or Devdutt Padikkal’s stroke-filled 92 or Mayank Agarwal’s blazing 47 may be the performances that grab the news headlines. But make no mistake, the victory was set up by Koushik’s excellent opening spell of three for 18 from his first seven overs. Bowling in the channel and moving it both ways, the 27-year-old picked up all three of Chhattisgarh's top-order.
"I basically stick to my strength which is to bowl that line and move the ball in and out from there. I think even the best batsmen will struggle if I bowl that way. Usually, my stock ball is the one that goes away. The one that comes in off the wicket, that's not on purpose," Koushik said after the game, reported ESPNCricinfo.
Although he was picked to play in the Karnataka Premier League for Shamanoor Devangere Diamonds in 2010, it wasn’t until last year that Koushik got his chance to represent his state team. In the 2018-19 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, India’s domestic T20 tournament, he picked up 17 wickets in ten matches at an impressive economy rate of 6.36.
"I used to play cricket just for passion, I didn't know about the league structure or club structure until I was 17. At 17, I started playing league cricket. Later when I joined engineering, I used to miss out on many games due to exams. Because of that, my returns were also not good enough to get me selected for zonals,” Koushik said.
"After I finished engineering, I took a break of eight months and that's when I played for the Karnataka U-23. I did well that year and from there it picked up. Later I joined Amazon, I worked for one-and-a-half years as a content developer. During that time, I used to play all kinds of matches, league matches, corporate matches, whichever matches I could get, I used to play," he added.
Incidentally, Koushik made his at the start of this month also against Chhattisgarh, during the league phase, and on Friday, will be featuring in another domestic final when Karnataka take on neighbours Tamil Nadu.