Anshul Kamboj had every reason to remember his ODI debut, not necessarily fondly. On Oct 3, the Haryana pacer went wicketless and conceded 82 runs in nine overs against the West Indies in New Chandigarh, a performance that put him in the list of most expensive Indian bowlers on ODI debut. On Wednesday, at Eden Park, he had a rather different story to tell.In his first over itself, Kamboj bowled a maiden to swashbuckling New Zealand opener Tim Seifert. After what he had endured in his maiden ODI, six balls without a run felt like a small victory in itself.By the end of the evening, Kamboj had collected two wickets, conceded just 22 runs in his 10 overs and walked away with the Player of the Match award in India’s five-wicket victory. It equalled the most economical ten-over spell by an Indian quick since Javagal Srinath’s 3/13 against Zimbabwe in 2003.“One bad match does not decide a player’s career,” Kamboj said afterwards. “I have been doing the same things right from the start. One bad match doesn’t affect me much. It has only given me the motivation to do better. I don’t pay attention to the chatter. I focus on my cricket and see how I can improve.”Until Auckland, Kamboj’s brief flirtation with international cricket had felt like a series of frantic, breathless airport scrambles. His Test debut in Manchester last year in July came after Arshdeep Singh suffered a split webbing during training. Kamboj arrived from India just days before the fourth Test against England and endured a difficult introduction, conceding 89 runs for one wicket in 18 overs. Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley made sure he had little time to settle.The ODI debut was no less abrupt. Called up as Prasidh Krishna’s replacement after the Karnataka speedster injured his hamstring, Kamboj was pulled out of an India A fixture in Puducherry and drafted into the senior side against the West Indies.In Auckland, for the first time in his brief international career, he was not scrambling to join the squad or stepping in at the last minute. And when he was introduced as first change in the eighth over after India elected to bowl, he looked a bowler who knew exactly what he wanted to do.The conditions helped. Unlike the largely unresponsive surface in New Chandigarh, Eden Park offered enough seam movement to reward discipline. Kamboj found it immediately, extracting movement and hitting a testing length. Even when Seifert and Daryl Mitchell looked to attack, he refused to offer them anything easy.His first spell was wicketless but invaluable in building pressure. He returned later to remove New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner and Nathan Smith. His economy of 2.20 became the frugallest ten-over spell by an Indian seamer since Jasprit Bumrah’s identical figures against Zimbabwe in Harare ten years ago.“In cricket, if you focus more on the process than the result, then you will be alright. If you are executing well, I mean if you want to bowl a yorker and if you execute well and still go for runs, then there’s no problem. You don’t focus on the result because the result won’t always be in your favour. What you can do is you can execute well,” he said.“The feedback (after his ODI debut) was that if you are bowling in good areas, then you should continue it. It’s not necessary that if you execute well every time, you will get hit for runs every time. So, just focus on your execution as much as possible. Don’t think too much about the result.”Kamboj was also quick to acknowledge that his contribution was part of a larger bowling effort. “If someone is bowling well from one end, then you get a wicket from the other end. You just have to create as much pressure as possible,” he said.
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