Should India Keep Picking Prasidh Krishna In ODIs?
Recently, Prasidh's performances across formats have put him in the limelight, both good and bad. The question however is, does he fit into the scheme of things in ODI cricket?
Prasidh Krishna had quite the 2025. Purple Cap winner at the IPL, Test call-up for the tour of England, smashed for runs, but came back and was one of the heroes of the 5th Test that India went on to win with 8 wickets in the game.
An ODI call-up from there after a two-year hiatus, as he featured in the 3rd ODI against Australia, but ended up getting absolutely tonked. Played against South Africa, he was expensive but also picked up wickets. That has been his story in ODI cricket ever since.
The man can get wickets, but for the life of him, can’t seem to contain runs. In a place like India, where every player gets criticised, abused or trolled, Prasidh unsurprisingly found himself in the same situation after the first 2 ODIs against New Zealand.
Now I don’t really think that a lot of us doubt his ability and what he brings to the table; a tall, fast bowler who can consistently clock 140+ and gets good bounce, but also an added natural variation of his deception of length (more on this ahead).
He’s got India those middle over wickets, which is crucial in ODI cricket, but not without giving away his fair share of runs. I think for people who defend him by saying that he’s at least giving you wickets, the argument becomes a little weak when we compare him to his peers.
For this piece, I wanted to bring forward some arguments to back Prasidh and then see if there’s a counter to each of them or if there’s enough evidence to support his inclusion in the playing XI.
Early Years & Domestic Numbers
As this piece focuses on ODI cricket, I wanted to understand if Prasidh’s always been as expensive. For that, I went back to the domestic circuit to take a look at his List A numbers and to see if he’s always been this way in a tournament like the Vijay Hazare Trophy, for example.
Here are his numbers across the VHTs from 2017 up until 2020.
The returns are really good, if not amazing. He’s picked up wickets in every season, and he’s also had solid averages and strike rates. The problem of his being expensive does not arise here, at least. If anything, one can say that it was only the 2020 season where he was slightly expensive before his India debut.
Even in red-ball domestic cricket, Prasidh ranked higher in terms of strike rate as compared to his peers from the Karnataka side. Amongst Karnataka’s top 5 active wicket-takers in the current Ranji Trophy squad, Prasidh ranks way above his peers in terms of bowling strike rate.
Although he has bowled less than his peers, these are some good names to stack up against. The likes of Vyshak & Kaverappa have both played the IPL and were also part of BCCI’s fast bowler contracts, and for Prasidh to have better numbers than them means that he definitely had something going his way.
Naturally, when you see these numbers and consistent performances across seasons, along with an IPL contract and doing decently well for his various franchises, Prasidh was always going to come into contention for an India call-up if he did well in the India A setup.
India Debut & IPL 2025
It happened too. In the absence of Siraj & Bumrah, who were both injured at the time, Prasidh was handed his India debut in the form of an ODI game against England. He impressed mightily, returning figures of 4 for 54, which at the time were the best by an Indian ODI debutant.
Unfortunately for him, he went on to have a very stop-start international career from then up until now, having played just 34 international games across formats in the last 5 years.
This, of course, was owing to lower back stress fractures, quadriceps injuries and much more, but the man could not seem to catch a break. So much so that he featured in the IPL of 2025 all the way after last featuring in the IPL in 2022!
Now it would be tough to ignore that his rise through 2025 had much to do with his IPL exploits. Turning up with 25 wickets in 15 games at an economy of 8.2, Prasidh was captain Shubman’s dream through and through, and that partnership also translated almost seamlessly into the Test setup.
This is where we’ll dive into a little bit of technicality to try to understand a couple of things that worked for Prasidh in that season.
The 3.4 centimetre deception & length
There’s a brilliant piece by Wisden that conducted a study on the correlation between release points and lengths of fast bowlers in the IPL from the seasons of 2022 to 2025.
The goal was possibly to understand the variance exhibited by a normal fast bowler in terms of their release point when looking to bowl a good-length delivery as opposed to a short delivery.
It made for some fascinating observations on Prasidh’s release points. While all bowlers show roughly the same ~8 centimetre variation in release points to hit different lengths on the pitch, the manner in which it was skewed for Prasidh is what was intriguing.
In a nutshell, the study concluded that Prasidh, unlike a lot of his tall, fast-bowling counterparts from around the world, showed minimal variation when bowling a good-length delivery versus a short ball. He was able to deliver a good length ball and a short length ball with a variation of just 3.4 centimetres in release points.
The outcome? Batters found him tougher to play, tougher to pick up length against him and hence felt rushed when he bowled to them.
The reason I bring this up is that I wanted to understand how much better and how often Prasidh can bowl these good or just short of good length deliveries, and how they compare to his Indian fast bowling peers.
One look at the data across ODIs from 2020 up until 2025 Feb, and it makes for some interesting observations. I looked at what the numbers look like when all of these pacers bowl good or short of good length deliveries on the stumps or just outside that off stump. This is what we get:
Very much in line with the claim that Prasidh is tougher to pick length against, and the extra pace/extra bounce factor that he brings to the table, his numbers here are elite.
Although batter control is binary and not something conclusive, it serves as a good indicator of the fact that Prasidh is not too far off from making it tough for batters when he bowls in the right areas. In fact, his economy of 4.5 is second only to Jasprit Bumrah, who goes at 3.8 runs per over of these lines & lengths.
But the kicker amongst all of these is that Prasidh has a strike rate second only to Siraj & Shami, two of India’s best fast bowlers in ODIs during this period. Even the percentage of deliveries bowled on this line & length indicates that Prasidh is not erratic in the sense that he does not hit good areas enough.
So then, are his bad deliveries just terrible?
Based on the dataset and the mappings available, we have yorkers, full tosses, full-length, and short deliveries remaining. As expected, it is the short deliveries that are the culprit.
About 10.6% of all deliveries that Prasidh bowls are short, and based on my understanding from this data, he should give up bowling short balls altogether in the ODI format. He goes at a whopping 8.9 RPO when bowling short, and this ruins his overall figures because he has picked just one wicket off a short ball.
Now I get that it is more of a setup delivery, or to get the batter thinking, but is there really any thinking if the batter is getting 9 runs per over against Prasidh’s short balls with a next to minimal risk of being dismissed?
Middle Overs
Another argument that I see a lot of people giving is that Prasidh’s done well in the middle overs. They talk about how he picks up wickets consistently, which is why India persists with him.
But when I compared him to Indian pacers in the 11 to 40 over phase of ODI cricket from Jan 2021 to Present, the numbers are not all that encouraging.
You see, Prasidh might have gotten wickets and even has a good strike rate, but most bowlers here have comparable numbers. If Harshit Rana is only slightly more expensive but is giving me runs with the bat, what is my incentive to play Prasidh?
The reason he’s even around at the moment is that Hardik was absent, and so were Bumrah & Shami from the ODI setup.
Realistically, the data is still not sizable enough to conclude, but if Harshit Rana’s early signals are anything to go by, he’s going to be a decent middle-overs bowler with the ability to do more than just tonk the ball lower down the order.
I also don’t have access to data beyond February of 2025, and it would be interesting to see if Prasidh’s changed something since his return to the ODI squad. But given how his games went, I suspect things are still the same.
With Arshdeep in the mix and at least Bumrah & Pandya returning to a full-strength ODI squad, Prasidh is still a while away from staking his claim in a first XI.
You can also read some of my other pieces below!
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Since the WC is in SA, the team management is not wrong to think that a Tall Hit the deck bowler will be more valuable than a swing bowler, but when we dig deeper we understand that Prasidh so far hasn't justified this with his performance vs Arshdeep who has done well at every opportunity. IND did the experimentation which was fine but now they should've got their answer
superb one
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