He should have played ahead of Shardul Thakur and Prasidh Krishna in the Test series opener against South Africa but when Mukesh Kumar finally got his chance at Newlands, the Indian team realised what exactly it missed in Centurion.

While the seasoned duo of Mohammed Siraj (seven wickets) and Jasprit Bumrah (eight wickets) did the bulk of the damage, Mukesh was the ideal third seamer with four wickets in the second Test, which included two top-order dismissals in the second innings. “There’s a lot of difference between bowling on these kind of tracks compared to Indian pitches. In India, when you try to bowl fuller length, the ball moves in the air, but here [in SA], if you try to bowl too full, you get smashed. So we decided that we will bowl between six to eight metre length [back of length] ” said Mukesh.