A glee spread on Yuzvendra Chahal’s face. His arms went skyward in joy. Then it all paused. He snarled in angst and turned back, shaking his head. He had foxed Brandon King in flight and drop, lured him out of the crease, and produced a thin edge, as the umpire would later judge in the third T20I in Providence. But Sanju Samson’s belated reaction cost him a wicket.

At this juncture of his career, every wicket matters, every run not conceded weighs in, every wicket-less outing conspires, as the scramble for winning a slot in the World Cup drifts into the final stretch. 

It’s a different format alright, the riffs vastly dissimilar to the one that unfolds in 55 days. But it does not matter — everything flows into the World Cup, every failure, every success, every movement would be viewed and judged through the lens of the mega event.

The story would be the same for the double-header in Florida. A T-20 game would be played out in front of hysteric expats. The series of course is at stake, with West Indies leading 2-1 nervously. But there is a bigger game unpacking in the background.

Chahal’s has been a peculiar case. He has not featured in a 50-over game for his country in eight months. This year, he featured in merely two. From January 2022 to January 24, he has featured in 16 games, and picked up 24 wickets at 27.9, which is more or less his career average (27.13). 

He has not become suddenly expensive either (5.5 in this phase and 5.2 overall). In fact, in this phase he produced two of his finest exhibitions of spin bowling overseas, a four-for apiece at Lord’s and Port of Spain.

His bowling in this format has not downturned considerably either. He still deceives the batsmen with the traditional weapons of the orthodox leg-spinner—leg-break, wrong’un and flipper. He still tosses the ball up and generates zip from the surface. 

As much 46 per cent of his wickets are either bowled or leg before the wicket. But 18 percent of his scalps were acquired through stumping too. It is not a case of the IPL numbers getting in between reality and judgment, as he collected 21 wickets in 14 games, his second-best haul in the league.