Speaking on his workload and Kamboj’s not so impressive debut so far, the bowling coach said, “England, they’ve got a powerful batting line-up. As a batter, your initial first 20 balls is very crucial and in terms of a guy who’s accurate and asking those questions, he’s Booms. So, he’s going to be asked a lot of times to come in and do the job for us. I think as the spearhead of the attack, that’s also a responsibility that he’s not shying away from. He wants to make an impact. At times today, we lacked that little bit of energy on the ball. That was maybe for the reasons where we wanted to push Siraj and Booms a little bit more because they had a little bit quicker airspeed and off the wicket a little bit to try and create those opportunities. And then with Anshul, you know, that’s international cricket. And we know we support him as best as we can. But it’s also for him, it’s good learning.”
He said the team management is trying to find a place for spinner Kuldeep Yadav, who so far has not played a single game in the series, but in their quest for batting depth that has not been possible. “I think it’s finding when he comes in, how can we find balance and how can we get that batting line-up to be a little bit longer and stronger. We’ve seen in the past that we’ve lost a lot of wickets and Kuldeep is world-class and he’s bowling really well at the moment. So we’re trying our best to find ways for him to get in. But unfortunately, with that, just the balance with the batting throws it out a little bit.”
Morkel said the five-match series is a real test for fast bowlers and getting them ready for it straight after the IPL is an issue. “It’s a real test. We play three, two Test match series a lot and this is now our first time in a while where we’ve come to five. It shouldn’t be an excuse, but in terms of condition, getting our guys conditioned and getting them ready for five Test match series coming straight out of the IPL is sometimes an issue because you have to balance between Test matches, getting these guys a good amount of recovery time but also to keep their bowling loads up. And that’s why it’s important for us to look at the future and get a good core of five, six bowlers that we can rotate and these guys can come in and they can do the job.
“At the moment, there’s not a lot of experience with the ball. We’ve got Siraj, we’ve got Booms that played a handful of Tests and then Akash Deep has played a little bit but he’s out injured. So we keep on finding ways to bring new guys in that’s learning now their international cricket, learning their trade in international cricket. It is not easy at the moment, but this is just a phase, a period that we need now to work through and get these guys fitter and stronger to last for the five Tests.”
Probed further on Kamboj’s speed, Morkel said, “If you look, I wish I could give you that answer, because I would have told him then how to bowl quicker, but he arrived here, he bowled well in the nets, and then obviously we went with what I discussed earlier. But he was definitely quicker when you saw him at the India A games. Yeah, again, he was definitely quicker.”
Morkel cleared doubts on fitness of Siraj and Bumrah and said both are okay. “Unfortunately when we took the second new ball, Bumrah rolled his ankles going down the stairs. Siraj also, I think, rolled his foot in one of the footholds. But they seemed to be okay.”