Ambidextorous Spinner joins KKR

KOCHI: As he watched State cricketer P. Prasanth churn out his left-arm spinners at a camp in Thiruvananthapuram a few years ago, Mohammed Ebrahim Sanuth was so impressed that he decided to try them out too.

“I liked the way he bowled, so I tried bowling like him,” said Sanuth, who had been a right-arm off-spinner till then.

His coach Biju George thought Sanuth’s new arm action looked promising and so he encouraged the youngster to bowl with both his hands at the Kerala Sports Council’s Regional Coaching Centre.

Sanuth pursued with it, and as wickets came in with both his right and left handed deliveries, he turned confident.

Sanuth was recently signed on a four-year contract by the Kolkata Knight Riders Academy — a centre where the Indian Premier League side grooms players for its main team.

“More than anything, it was my ability to bowl with both hands that won me the Knight Riders contract,” said Sanuth, who plays for Southern Railway, in Kochi the other day.

“John Buchanan (the former coach of the Australian team who is now the Knight Riders coach) said if I could bowl with both hands, it would be fantastic,” said the 20-year-old who got his Ranji call a couple of months ago against Haryana in Palakkad after bagging 28 wickets from four matches in the under-22 South Zone Championship in Bangalore.

Buchanan’s plan

Five years ago, Buchanan, who had given Australia some of its golden moments in cricket, had an ambitious plan to develop ambidextrous cricketers and saw it as a natural progression for the fast-evolving game.

“That would give the effect of having more players than the 11 allowed in the field,” he had said then.

Buchanan’s plan included working with the Australian Cricket Board and the Australian state education departments to have coaches encourage pre-teens to play with both sides of their body, developing skills that could be honed later.

Sanuth’s inclusion in the Knight Riders team offers him a ready-made opportunity to use his vast experience to refine him further.

The youngster’s talent with both hands had also impressed former Indian coach Lalchand Rajput who invited Sanuth to the National Cricket Academy.

There, he came under the experienced eyes of some of India’s legendary spinners, including E.A.S. Prasanna and Bishen Singh Bedi.

“They, however, advised me to bowl with the hand which I’m more comfortable with and to concentrate on that,” said the spinner.

Of course, Sanuth’s forte, right-hand off-spin, offers more variety. “I’ve also developed a back-spinner which got me 12 of the 28 under-22 wickets in Bangalore,” he said.

His best was against Karnataka where he took seven for 61 in the second innings.

And with Buchanan, a former university lecturer who had brought in many innovations to Australian cricket, keen to work on this rare find, the future certainly looks very exciting.