Rob Houwing’s weekly IPL South African player-watch

Cape Town – Yusuf Abdulla looks increasingly like the nearest thing this country possesses to a genuine, specialist Twenty20 bowler.

The 26-year-old Dolphins and Kings XI Punjab left-arm seamer has confirmed as much during the early stages of the Indian Premier League.

In the process, Abdulla looks rosily set to earn a Proteas ticket to the World Twenty20 in England in a few weeks, where he would add to his solitary Pro20 international cap earned recently in the second fixture against Australia at Centurion.

The fact that he featured strongly on that occasion, bagging a debut analysis of 3-0-16-1 in the SA triumph, can only have aided his bid to coax more consistent favour from Mike Procter and his fellow national selectors.

Abdulla has carried his domestic form compellingly into the IPL spotlight, putting a disastrous start to the tournament well behind him to become a trump card for the Kings XI attack.

The stoutly-built customer was flogged for 19 runs in a solitary over on IPL debut by the Delhi Daredevils’ Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag at Newlands - but of course that can happen to anyone when a team has been set a six-over “Duckworth” mini-target!

He was then a little iffy again as his side lost a second match on the trot, to Kolkata Knight Riders at his Kingsmead home venue, with Abdulla going for 20 runs in two overs.

But a turnaround in the Kings XI’s fortunes - victory in each of their next two outings - has been accompanied by a simultaneous, quite dramatic upswing in fortunes for the South African.

First he rewarded the camp’s faith in him by claiming a lucrative haul of four for 31, this time finally in a “maximum” stint of four overs, against Ray Jennings’ ailing (presently bottom of the table) Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Abdulla could hardly have wished for a better bundle of scalps in the Durban encounter: Jesse Ryder, Jacques Kallis, Kevin Pietersen (utterly bamboozled by a slower ball for a two-ball duck) and Ross Taylor.

He was a key factor again in the Newlands game on Sunday against the champion Rajasthan Royals, this time earning an analysis of 4-0-21-3, which has suddenly catapulted him to fourth on the list of leading IPL wicket-takers as things stand.

His seven dismissals have come at an average of only 13 and economy rate of 8.27 – borderline acceptable in this format anyway, but even better when you consider the punishment he had taken in the first two matches.

Of course damp coastal conditions have been fairly conducive to swing bowling, and with the tournament now generally shifting more toward highveld destinations, it will be interesting to see whether Abdulla prospers to the same degree.

But he has impressed me all the same recently, especially in the victory over Rajasthan which I watched from a position in the crowd fairly square-on to the action.

I am more used to seeing bowlers operate from media centre vantage points which tend to be “down the track”, of course, but this location allowed me a rare opportunity to appreciate both his length and deft changes of pace, even if not his line.

His faster balls certainly appeared to hit the wicketkeeper’s gloves forcefully – he gets a surprisingly good leap on delivery for a burly fellow -- while his throttle-down delivery is both nicely disguised and a very marked foil, in terms of his willingness to genuinely take the gas off it.

Abdulla appears to have gained the useful knack, too, of firing the ball in low and flat outside off-stump – crucially just inside being called wide – which can make boundary-hitting very difficult.

Although looks can sometimes be deceptive, Abdulla appears to be a candidate for a winter programme for better “conditioning”, as they like to call it these days.

Indeed, it may just explain why both his first-class career (in particular) and List A bowling stats look well less impressive than in the newest, most glitzy format where it’s all about really short, sharp bursts.

For instance, his 19-game first-class career sports just one five-wicket haul, poor for a supposed strike bowler.

But in Twenty20 cricket there can be no doubting the Dolphins man’s prowess – he has presently bagged 41 wickets in 30 T20 matches at an eye-catching average of 15.87 and economy rate that is luminary too: 6.08.

The rapid strides of this especially “instant” form of cricket, along with its unique rewards to those who excel at it, are good news for players like Abdulla and others.

And if T20 is where he really carves out a niche for himself at the expense of any other, then why on earth not?