With doosra added to his armoury, Cullen is itching to bowl at the Indians

“No, it’s not Harbhajan, I have learnt it from the master itself,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “I learnt it from Saqlain Mushtaq, he’s the one who originally invented it and I got it from him,” he says and almost expecting a supplementary question to that reply. “No, actually, I still haven’t met him in person but I have learnt the doosra by watching him closely,” he reveals an interesting story.

“I got all footage available of him from the CA library and other friends, of his early days and later years and studied that, kept rewinding and zooming in to learn the grip and release, made notes and then hit the nets to put that into practice. It was a labourious process,” he smiles. “But I have it now,” he says.

“And if I get to bowl it with the SG or the Duke that helps the finger spinners, it would come out better,” he says. These days Cullen is also trying to add the slider-ball to his kitty. “It’s the ball that will just slide through the air with the hand, kept for the left-handers, you need to have varieties for both right-handers and left-handers. Also I am trying to learn to bowl a lot slower through the air,” he says.

Cullen has been on the final stages of his comeback from near-obscurity—despite having a Cricket Australia contract, he was dropped from his domestic team and has been trying to reinvent himself playing club cricket. But with twin tours to the sub-continent, Cullen’s re-emergence is seen as a big positive sign in Australian cricket that is facing a crisis of quality spinners.

“I am not getting reinvented, it’s just that I was not getting to play games and I slipped into club cricket as I tried to add more options to my bowling. I am feeling a lot better now, I had few success in limited overs games and only yesterday I finished a four-day game and have been feeling good about it, besides this knock on my jaw that has left me some bruises,” he laughs. As he drive back home, he signs out saying: “I’ll see you in India maiite…hopefully.”