Irfan’s blues: No rhythm, can’t swing

But despite Irfan’s reasoning, the fact remains that the young paceman is for the first time facing his first low in international cricket after his meteoric rise after his dream debut against Australia last season. After taking over the reins of the pace department ahead of seniors like Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra in Tests, Irfan was forced to doing the drinks duty during the first ODI in Kochi.

Press him about this sudden slump and Irfan gets on to the denial mode. ‘‘I know a number of reasons have been given about my slump but I have set standards for myself and I wish to maintain them,’’ he said giving a hint of opening up.

Finally, he unravels the mystery of the missing swing and rhythm seems to be the key word here. ‘‘But when you don’t have the rhythm, you just cannot help it,’’ he said.

To explain his point, Irfan said he would have liked to play a few more matches going into the Test series. ‘‘After my injury lay off, the rhythm in my bowling was missing. And it was at the end of the series, I finally got it back. Ideally, I would have liked three more matches before the Tests,’’ he added.

Though Irfan played a Duleep Trophy game for the West Zone against South before the Test matches, he believes that it wasn’t enough. ‘‘Baroda Cricket Association organised a few matches for me. We couldn’t do more than that,’’ he said.

Problem No.2 for Irfan has been the make of the balls used for the series.

The ‘SG Test’ balls used in the series are known to swing less and even the Pakistan pacers have complained about it. ‘‘The SG ball definitely does not swing when it is new, but does the reverse when it gets old. Similarly, if you have the Kookaburra balls they swing a lot wshen they are new,’’ said the pacer.

But not the one to hide behind excuses he added: ‘‘But that really cannot justify the reason for the missing swing.’’

So what’s the solution? Is he planning to talk to some swing bowling legends from Pakistan who in the past had given him vital tips? ‘‘One has to find a solution on his own,’’ he concluded.