These words trickled easily out of Kuldeep Yadav's mouth, hours after he spun a wicked web of deceit around England on Thursday. In excellent batting conditions on the opening day of the final Test, the pixie left-arm wrist-spinner was in his elements, braving the cold and using a stiff wind to his advantage with practiced ease.

Watching Kuldeep in action, the uninitiated would have imagined him to be a seasoned campaigner in Test cricket, such was the felicity and calmness with which he went about his business. They would have been shocked to learn that he was only playing his 12th Test, despite having debuted seven years back at the same venue, the wonderfully picturesque HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala.

These last seven years have been 'interesting', the 29-year-old observed, with a wry smile. Talk about understatements.

Kuldeep's debut against Australia, in the fourth and final Test with the series locked 1-1 and regular skipper Virat Kohli ruled out with a shoulder injury, was one of the braver calls in Indian cricket. At head coach Anil Kumble's urgings, stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane resisted the temptation tobring in another batter, choosing to blood the Chinaman bowler. It was a move that paid handsome dividends; Kuldeep picked up four for 68 in Australia's first-innings 300, the scalp of David Warner delighting him particularly because he dismissed him with a flipper recently learnt from the great, late Shane Warne.

Then 22, the world seemed Kuldeep's oyster. Within months, he formed a heady wrist-spinning limited-overs combine with Yuzvendra Chahal, but after two years of sustained success, the wheels came off spectacularly following the 2019 World Cup. In Test cricket, Kuldeep was more often surplus to requirement, R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja such a potent force that a third cog in the wheel almost an afterthought.