Depth India has in quick bowlers is absolutely fantastic: Lockie Ferguson
New Zealand pacer Lockie Ferguson has been extremely impressed with the Indian fast bowlers recently. The likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Shami, Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav have showed time and again the Indian bowlers can hunt in packs and challenge any batting line-up.
Lockie Ferguson is also a part of the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and has seen young pacers like Shivam Mavi, Prasidh Krishna and Kamlesh Nagarkoti from close quarters. Thus he also believes that the future of Indian fast bowling is in safe hands.
"Very good! I think there is a really good crop of quick bowlers. Of course, they have got the skills because in India you need to learn the skills of change-ups perhaps because the wickets don't provide the pace and bounce that we do here.
But I think the depth in fast bowling for India has been growing probably the quickest out of all the different fields. So I think that the depth that you have in the quick bowlers is absolutely fantastic," Lockie Ferguson told Sportskeeda's Indranil Basu in an exclusive interview.
Indian pace attack would have learned a lot from New Zealand tour: Lockie Ferguson
India had a fantastic tour of Australia in 2018-19 when they became the first Asian side to win a Test series Down Under. They also followed it up with a fantastic home season where the fast bowlers took a combined 81 wickets on dead Indian pitches.
A lot was expected of them when they toured New Zealand earlier this year. However, the fast bowlers failed to have a similar impact and India were comprehensively whitewashed 2-0 in the two-match Test series.
Lockie Ferguson believes that the Indian pacers were slightly shorter in their lengths and did not bowl the natural length that brings the bowlers success in New Zealand. He feels that the Indian bowlers have too much talent to not learn anything from the tour and the Kiwi pacer expects a strong fightback from the Indian team the next time that they are in New Zealand.
"I know they perhaps didn't have the best of times in New Zealand but it is very difficult to play in different countries and try to work out different things. For us New Zealanders, we know the natural length to bowl in New Zealand and angles that you need to have your fields at. But it takes time for guys to learn from all over the world," Lockie Ferguson said.
So certainly it was a challenge for India bowling on the green decks but I hope they learnt a lot and they will come back stronger next time," Lockie Ferguson stated.
Thus, Lockie Ferguson was pretty sure that Indian pace attack was going to dominate world cricket for a while because of the kind of depth and quality that it has.