IPL 2021: Brett Lee my hero ‘always looked up to him’, reveals Prasidh Krishna.

Pacer Prasidh Krishna, who made a record-breaking start to his international career against England in the first ODI, has revealed that he used to “copy every single spinner or fast bowler” when he started off.

Krishna also said that former Australia quick Brett Lee was someone he always looked up to.

“Nobody really advised me in terms of taking up cricket as a career option. It’s just that my school coach Srinivas Murthy figured out that I was tall and I was getting the ball to move back. So, he’s the one who first corrected my running technique, the angle of my running, my loading and all of that. By doing all this, I also realised I was getting quicker and better. I was getting sharper with things. So that is when I realised, OK, there is something with fast bowling. And like I said, I always had a liking for fast bowling. Brett Lee was someone I always looked up to,” Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) official website quoted Krishna as saying.

“So that’s how it all started from school with Srinivas Murthy sir helping me. And yeah, from there, it’s been a mixture of everybody’s efforts. I remember one thing for sure. Any cousin, any elder cousin who walked with me on the road, was embarrassed because I used to imitate every single bowler in the world. All throughout my journey on the road, I would imitate actions and then try and be that guy, try and be this guy, trying to copy every single spinner or fast bowler. So, from there, it is all something natural — you run in, it all starts from the way you run in, and then load up. And I’m fortunate that I have a really smooth action that way,” he added.

In his debut match, Krishna returned with the figures of 4/54 from his 8.1 overs, which included a maiden over. Notably, these are the best figures by an Indian on debut in ODIs.

Reflecting on T20 cricket, Krishna stressed that in this format, it is all about adapting to situations as quickly as possible as it is a “really fast game”.

“It is a really fast game — T20. So, it’s all about how fast are you willing to adapt! Because as a bowler, I don’t think there’s anybody who wants to just keep bowling one length all throughout. You want to do something, you want the batsman to do something, you want to try out things. So that’s where T20 comes into the picture because it challenges you about how many different things can you do and how consistently you can do,” he said.

“So, that way I was pretty happy and my height helped me with the yorkers because it was pretty tough for them to hit as it was coming from a really good height. And from that point onwards, it was about picking up skills, looking at people and inventing your own things. Nobody really planned for me. I came in between. They didn’t know what variations I had, and like I said, T20 is such a fast game that you don’t pick a couple of balls and the over is already done because you don’t really have time to think and plan and take a bowler on. You have to be there from ball one,” Krishna added.