The Highs, Lows & Length of Prasidh Krishna: Why India Keeps Returning to its Unfinished Fast Bowler

Before Prasidh Krishna learnt to make a cricket ball climb towards a batter’s face, he wanted to rise above a volleyball net. Height was always going to be his gift. Length became his problem.

Indian cricket has spent years trying to reconcile the two. In Colombo, Prasidh bowled 14 overs and took three wickets. On a surface where India had selected three spinners and expected the slow bowlers to control the conversation, the tall fast bowler made bounce his language.

Lahiru Udara received the sophisticated version. Krishna angled the ball towards off stump, made it straighten and extracted enough bounce to find the edge. Kamil Mishara received the less diplomatic version. The ball arrived at 142 kilometres per hour, kicked towards his face and brushed his glove. Kamindu Mendis tried to pull another short delivery. The extra bounce disrupted the stroke and presented Ravindra Jadeja with a simple catch.

Three wickets for 47 runs. Well, you might think this is a story about three wickets. It is not.

It is about why India keeps returning to a fast bowler it has never completely trusted and cannot quite abandon.

Krishna possesses almost everything selectors order when imagining a modern fast bowler. He is 6-foot-3. He can cross 140 kph. He can make a docile pitch behave badly. His high release point creates bounce that cannot be coached into a shorter bowler. He has taken wickets with the new ball, through the middle overs and at the death. He has won an IPL Purple Cap. He has produced eight wickets in a Test in England.

And yet every compliment about Krishna seems to arrive carrying a “but”.

He has pace, but can leak boundaries. He creates chances, but struggles to sustain the correct length. He can produce a devastating spell, but has rarely made his body, control and promise arrive together. At 30, Krishna remains one of Indian cricket’s most curious propositions. He is no longer young enough to be protected by the word “potential”. He remains too promising to be described without it.

The Boy Who Chose Cricket Over the Net

Krishna inherited two sports. His father, Murali Krishna, bowled fast at the college level. His mother, Kalavathi, played volleyball for Karnataka. Their son acquired his father’s appetite for pace and his mother’s height.

At Carmel School in Bengaluru, Krishna played cricket and volleyball. By 14, he had to make a decision. The volleyball player who enjoyed spiking the ball chose to become the fast bowler who would make it spike from the pitch.

The choice did not immediately produce a prodigy.

Krishna was left out of Karnataka’s Under-16 side. The rejection hurt because age-group selection can feel brutally final to a teenager. Everyone around you appears to be moving forward while your name is missing from the list.

Srinivas Murthy, who coached him at school, later recalled wondering whether Krishna was sufficiently committed to fast bowling. The boy was tall and athletic. The raw material was visible. The conviction had to catch up.

Then came the insistence. Asked whether he wanted to become an all-rounder, Krishna reportedly corrected his coach. “No, sir. I am a fast bowler.”

It sounds like a declaration of identity. At that stage, it was closer to an argument with the evidence. Krishna had height. He had pace. He did not yet possess the alignment, strength or control required to make either consistently useful. That would become the recurring struggle of his career: learning how to organise an unusual body quickly enough for international cricket.

Five Wickets and Another Wait

Krishna's first-class debut arrived because Karnataka’s established fast bowlers were unavailable for a match against Bangladesh A in September 2015.

He was 19. He took a wicket with his first ball. Rony Talukdar edged behind. Then Anamul Haque, Soumya Sarkar and Nasir Hossain followed. Bangladesh A collapsed to 41/5 during his opening spell. Krishna finished with 5/49.

Many careers would have accelerated from there. His stalled.

Karnataka possessed a strong pace attack. Krishna returned to the fringes and waited. He did not make his List A debut until 2017 or his senior T20 debut until January 2018. One extraordinary afternoon had announced him. It had not established him.

The breakthrough finally arrived in the 2017-18 Vijay Hazare Trophy. Krishna took 17 wickets from eight games and finished as the tournament’s second-highest wicket-taker. His 3/37 in the final helped Karnataka defeat Saurashtra.

At the beginning of 2018, he had been a net bowler attempting to impress IPL scouts. By May, Kolkata Knight Riders needed a replacement for the injured Kamlesh Nagarkoti.

Krishna received the call. Even his IPL career entered through somebody else’s injury. He took 10 wickets in seven matches during that first season. The net bowler had become an IPL fast bowler in a matter of months. The larger lesson, however, had already taken shape.

Krishna's career would rarely move in a straight line. An opening would appear unexpectedly. He would rush through it. Then another wait would begin.

Teaching Height How to Behave

The MRF Pace Foundation saw the attraction and the flaw.

Krishna could generate speed and bounce, but his body fell away during delivery. His front and back feet did not align properly. The action pushed the ball into right-handed batters and made control difficult. M Senthilnathan and the coaches worked on his strength, balance and alignment. Glenn McGrath supplied another ingredient: calmness.

Krishna later said McGrath taught him to remain in the present and understand precisely which lengths belonged on which pitches. It was valuable advice for a bowler whose worst moments often arrived when one poor delivery began contaminating the next. A boundary could trigger the desire to bowl faster. The search for additional effort could disturb his action. The disturbed action could produce another boundary.

Suddenly, one loose ball had become an expensive over. Krishna's height made the error more tempting. Tall fast bowlers naturally enjoy hitting the deck. The ball climbs. Batters become uncomfortable. Wickets can appear dramatically.

But bounce without a threatening line or intelligent length becomes theatre without consequence. International batters wait for the short ball, ride it and score. The gift requires governance. Krishna has spent his career trying to govern it.

Four Wickets, One Record and a Warning

His India debut in March 2021 compressed the Krishna experience into one afternoon.

England attacked him. His first three overs cost 37 runs. Jonny Bairstow and Jason Roy treated the debutant as the obvious release point in India’s attack. A lesser bowler might have disappeared from the contest.

Krishna wanted the ball again. When he returned, he shortened his length slightly, straightened his line and took four wickets. India won by 66 runs. Krishna finished with 4/54, then the best figures by an Indian bowler on ODI debut. The scorecard offered triumph. The route to it offered a warning. He could recover from punishment. But why did punishment so often precede the recovery?

A year later, Krishna appeared to have found the answer.

Against West Indies in February 2022, he took 4/12 in nine overs in Ahmedabad. The pitch offered assistance, but Krishna’s discipline made it lethal. He repeatedly found the corridor outside off stump, conceded only three scoring shots and produced the controlled hostility India had been waiting to see. He was named Player of the Match and subsequently Player of the Series. India appeared to have discovered its tall, middle-overs enforcer.

Then his back broke down.

The Fast Bowler Who Disappeared

Krishna last played for India in Zimbabwe in August 2022 before a lumbar stress fracture removed him from cricket.

Fast bowlers expect pain. A stress fracture is different. It does not merely stop a bowler from playing. It forbids the action around which his working life has been constructed. Running, loading and releasing the ball become threats to the bone trying to heal.

Krishna underwent surgery. The return to bowling took approximately 24 to 26 weeks. He missed the 2023 IPL and spent close to a year away from competitive cricket. “As fast bowlers, you sign up for injuries and long days,” he reportedly told in one of his interviews during his recovery. “It’s just part of our game.”

That is the professional answer. The calendar supplies the emotional one.

Months of rehabilitation. Repeated strength tests. Shortened run-ups. Controlled spells. The anxiety of asking the back to perform the same violent movement that injured it. Krishna returned in August 2023 and was later drafted into India’s World Cup squad after Hardik Pandya was ruled out.

The opportunity looked enormous. He played one match. India’s campaign ended without him receiving another. Then Australia struck 68 runs from his four overs in a T20 international in Guwahati. At the time, they were the most expensive figures recorded by an Indian bowler in the format.

The old problem had returned in its most public form. Potential had become punishment again. Krishna made his Test debut in South Africa in December 2023, conceding 93 runs for one wicket across the match. Weeks later, while playing a Ranji Trophy game for Karnataka, he injured his left quadriceps after bowling 14.5 overs.

The injury required surgery. He missed the 2024 IPL too. Two IPL seasons disappeared. His Test beginning had produced little. His white-ball return had included a national record no bowler wanted.

Indian cricket kept waiting for Krishna. And the bowler kept waiting for his body.

The ₹9.5-Crore Question

Gujarat Titans paid ₹9.5 crore for Krishna before IPL 2025. It was a substantial investment in a bowler who had not played an IPL match since 2022.

The decision carried faith and risk in almost equal quantities. Krishna answered with 25 wickets from 15 matches and the Purple Cap.

The method mattered. He no longer chased wickets using pace alone. He mixed hard lengths with slower deliveries, used the larger boundary intelligently and allowed the pitch to determine the weapon. His economy rate remained below eight in a tournament designed to humiliate bowlers.

The two missing seasons had not returned. Something else had: Control. The performance forced Krishna back into India’s Test plans for England.

The next examination would expose how fragile that control remained.

Krishna went to England in 2025 carrying form, confidence and the physical characteristics that usually excite touring teams. Tall bowler. High release. Seam movement. Awkward bounce.

England responded by attacking his length. At Headingley and Edgbaston, Prasidh repeatedly landed too short. The pitches were flatter than expected. The ball sat up. England’s batters pulled, cut and clipped him whenever he strayed.

At Edgbaston, five overs cost 50 runs during one spell. Five overs. Fifty runs. It was the most expensive spell of at least five overs by an Indian Test bowler in almost two decades. Across his early appearances in the series, Krishna conceded a boundary roughly once every eight deliveries. Every expensive over reopened the same question.

How long could India continue selecting possibility over control? He took wickets, but the runs between them were becoming unaffordable. India left him out of the third and fourth Tests. Two matches on the bench can be a rest for an established player. For a 29-year-old fast bowler with a small Test career and a long medical file, they can resemble the beginning of the end. Then India recalled him for The Oval.

Eight Wickets and No Guarantee

The Oval Test offered no gentle route back.

India needed to level the series. Jasprit Bumrah was absent. England’s batters had already learnt that Prasidh could be forced off his length. He had to change the pattern while operating inside its consequences.

Krishna began pitching the ball fuller. He varied his lengths more intelligently. He continued using the bounce that made him different but stopped allowing it to make him predictable. He took 4/62 in the first innings. He added 4/126 in the second. Eight wickets in the match. Ben Duckett, Zak Crawley and Joe Root were among his victims. In the final hour, with England threatening to complete an extraordinary chase, Krishna bowled Josh Tongue. Mohammed Siraj finished the contest and India won by six runs.

Siraj deservedly became the face of the victory. Krishna quietly left with eight wickets.

Across three Tests in that series, he had taken 14. The average remained expensive. The boundary problem had not vanished. Yet a bowler who had been punished and dropped had returned to help save the series.

The Oval did not solve Krishna. It explained why India remained interested.

When Short Became Smart Again

That is what makes his Colombo spell more interesting than the number three. In England, Krishna’s short length had become evidence against him. In Colombo, it became his principal weapon.

The difference was judgement. Mishara faced a ball that was directed at his body, rose sharply and arrived too quickly for control. Kamindu tried to attack a short ball outside off stump but could not get on top of the bounce. These were not hopeful bouncers thrown towards a batter. They were decisions.

Krishna understood the pitch, the batter and the moment. He used height without becoming trapped by it. The delivery to Udara completed the picture. It angled in, straightened and climbed. Movement, line and bounce worked together.

Sri Lanka reached 265/8 by stumps and Sonal Dinusha resisted with 85. Krishna had not blown the innings away. His three wickets did not settle the Test or his career. They showed a bowler beginning to recognise which part of himself each situation requires. That distinction matters. Krishna has always possessed weapons. Selection depends on knowing when to use them.

Why Does India Keep Returning to Him?

India does not lack fast bowlers.

Mohammed Siraj has survived enough overseas battles to become the attack’s workhorse. Akash Deep moves the ball. Arshdeep Singh offers a left-arm angle. Harshit Rana brings aggression. Auqib Nabi forced his way into the Sri Lanka squad through domestic wickets. Jasprit Bumrah, when fit, operates in another category entirely.

Why, then, does Krishna keep returning? The answer is 'Geometry.'

Very few Indian fast bowlers can reproduce his combination of height, release point, speed and bounce. On flat pitches, movement may disappear. Bounce generated from the bowler’s physical dimensions remains available. That makes Krishna attractive in Australia and South Africa. It makes him useful on exhausted Indian surfaces where the new ball has stopped swinging. It allows a captain to attack a batter’s ribs, gloves and splice without relying solely on extreme pace.

His white-ball record provides another answer.

Krishna's ODI career began with four wickets. He later took 4/12 against West Indies. His IPL return produced a Purple Cap. These are not isolated suggestions from the nets. He has delivered high-level evidence. The frustration comes from the gap between evidence and repetition. India does not keep selecting a fantasy. It keeps selecting a performance that has appeared often enough to remain believable and disappeared often enough to remain uncertain.

Promise, Potential and Pressure

Promise is flattering at 20. At 30, it can become a burden.

Krishna is now competing against younger bodies, newer options and the memory of every expensive spell. He cannot be evaluated forever as the bowler he may eventually become. Performance must replace projection. That pressure will not disappear after three wickets in Colombo. Nor should it. He still needs to control his economy across long Test spells. He needs to find the fuller length without sacrificing the bounce that distinguishes him. He needs to remain available after years in which availability itself became an achievement.

Most of all, he needs to make good days repeatable. The temptation with Krishna has always been to treat every success as an arrival and every expensive spell as an ending. His career has resisted both verdicts. A five-wicket haul on first-class debut did not establish him. Four wickets on ODI debut did not secure him. A stress fracture did not finish him. Two lost IPL seasons did not erase him. Fifty runs in five overs at Edgbaston did not prevent eight wickets at The Oval. Three wickets in Colombo will not complete him.

Perhaps that is the point.

Before Krishna became a fast bowler, he played volleyball. The game taught him to rise. Cricket has taught him how often he may have to do it again. Height gave him the possibility. Length continues to decide the future. And somewhere between the two stands Indian cricket’s unfinished fast bowler, carrying more promise, potential and pressure than ever before.