Siddarth Kaul wants to make use of his IPL experience on India A tour

An important cog in the wheel of the Sunrisers Hyderabad bowling line up and a U-19 World Cup winner under Virat Kohli, Indian pacer Siddarth Kaul has been picked for the India A tour to South Africa for the limited-overs tri-series involving Australia and South Africa.

Kaul after a good domestic season with Punjab where he leads the bowling attack played alongside the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Mustafizur Rahman, Chris Jordan in the Sunrisers and certainly had quite to learn. During the course of the tournament skipper, David Warner showed enough faith in him and Kaul developed an excellent knuckleball which helped him restrict the batsmen to a minimum in the death.

“It feels good when your performance is rewarded. Playing for India A is always a challenging task and I am looking forward to playing against South Africa and Australia A teams. I have been playing for India A teams in Challenger Trophy also and that experience has helped me. My aim is to perform whenever I get an opportunity and bowling to my strength and I will surely take confidence from my IPL experience this year forward and utilise this opportunity. I am currently attending the fast bowler training camp in Bengaluru and it has helped my game,” Kaul said while talking to Indian Express.

He revealed the formula for success in the IPL where he was among the top 3 bowlers for Sunrisers, and picked ahead of the likes of Barinder Sran and Ashish Nehra. “Honestly speaking, I stuck to my basics and my plan was to bowl to my strength. There were different situations and different pressure in every game and players like Bhuveneshwar Kumar and Ashish Nehra would help me with the plan and seeing them bowl also helped me a lot. As a pacer, it is important to bowl according to your plan and that’s what I learnt this IPL,” Kaul said.

He also benefitted from the pressure situations that he faced in the domestic season that preceded the IPL under the guidance of Punjab senior and SRH teammate Yuvraj Singh. “I bowled for Punjab in the death overs earlier in the domestic season and Yuvi paji and Bhajji paji always encouraged me and Yuvi was also in the Sunrisers team along with David Warner, who showed confidence in me in the death overs.”

As the 27-year-old prepares to tour South Africa for the second time in his career with India A, he threw light on mental conditioning coach, Amit Bhattacharjee, who had a role to play in his development and improvement. “As a player, there are ups and downs and different phases and working with a mental conditioning coach helps you understand the strengths and weakness. Our focus has been how to stay calm in pressure situations,” the Punjab pacer said.

Kaul finished the 2017 IPL with 16 wickets from just 10 games, the third most successful bowler for the team. He was impressive at the death as well as with the new ball and his returns included a haul of 4/29 against the runners up Rising Pune Supergiant.