After an impact-making 91-ball 93 with the bat, Marco Jansen shone with the ball too, with the ongoing Guwahati Test being his dream game so far.
The short-ball tactic worked wonders for the lanky left-arm quick, especially as he wasn’t getting enough movement off the pitch. Keeping aside the poor shots from Dhruv Jurel and Rishabh Pant, Jansen’s short-pitched stuff proved to be a little too much for the Indians on a surface offering extra bounce.
“To be honest, the ball wasn’t nipping as much like it was in Calcutta, so we had to figure out a plan,” Jansen said later. “When I got my first wicket (that of Jurel) with a bouncer, we said, ‘Okay cool, let’s see how long this is going to work’ and yeah, it just came off.”
The extra bounce on that red-soil wicket turned out to be just ideal for Jansen, given his six-feet eight-inch height. “When there’s a wicket with a bit of pace and bounce, then I get to extract more out of it.
“Especially here, I’ve tried to learn what’s going to work for me and what’s going to help me perform to the best of my ability. It’s just one of those days when everything clicks and everything works and as a player, you take those days and you run,” a pleased Jansen said.
Before his 6/48 on Day III of the ongoing Test, Jansen’s experience of bowling in Indian conditions wasn’t at all great. Jokingly, he spoke about being “jealous” of those bowlers shorter than him as he struggles to get the ball to nip back on these subcontinent pitches.
“For me, I’ve always struggled bowling in India. I’m still jealous of people who get the ball to nip back, because like yesterday (Sunday), it was a perfect example of the ball going over the off-stump as I’m so tall from a different bowler like KG (Kagiso Rabada), who’s able to hit the top of off.
“I’ve always been jealous of those people who are a bit shorter than me.”