Galle: When Matt Kuhnemann suffered a compound dislocation to his right thumb, courtesy of a Matthew Wade smash down the ground in the Big Bash League on January 16, Dr Steve Frederiksen was at the Gabba as a spectator.
He immediately went to the Brisbane Heat rooms to assess the damage. Fredricksen had worked on Kuhnemann’s digits before, and quickly formed a plan.
Just over two weeks later, Kuhnemann had taken nine wickets for the game played a huge part in Australia’s innings and 242-run hiding of Sri Lanka. It left Kuhnemann’s captain and coach both awed by their spinner and hugely grateful to the surgeon who got him here.
Matt Kuhnemann celebrates another wicket in Galle.Credit: AP
Steve Smith said Fredricksen deserved a title more outlandish than surgeon for the work he performed on Kuhnemann. The surgeon had popped Kuhnemann’s thumb back in on the night, then scheduled surgery to pin it in place the very next morning.
“A lot of credit has got to go to the surgeon who did his thumb. He’s a magician I think, not a surgeon,” Smith said.
Kuhnemann was unplayable at times in the first Test, generating sharp spin and steep bounce when he wanted to, or alternatively skidding the ball treacherously into the line of the stumps.
“I think he just bowls nice balls consistently. Left-arm spinners to the right-handers, it just works in the subcontinent,” Smith said.
“We’ve seen it in plenty of spinners from India, [Ravindra] Jadeja, Axar Patel, guys like that, [Rangana] Herath here in Sri Lanka was a wizard, [Prabath] Jayasuriya is a very good bowler. Guys who can take the ball away from the bat and present the threats of skid and spin and bowl consistent balls, it’s very dangerous.
“He [Kuhnemann] did a wonderful job when he got his opportunity in India and he bowled beautifully this game.”
Kuhnemann’s efforts brought to mind Tim May’s spell against the West Indies in Adelaide, 1993, when he scooped 5-9 despite having somehow managed to put a shoe spike through his bowling hand.
Tim May and Shane Warne in 1993.Credit: Getty
As the West Indian lower order was falling apart to his bowling, May was almost sheepish in saying to Allan Border, “this is scary ‘AB’, they’re just coming out so good”. Came the reply: “Just keep treading on your hand!”
Though Kuhnemann’s injury was not quite as self-inflicted, nor on his bowling hand, it is not difficult to think of teammates wondering whether the mishap had a similar superman effect.
Certainly, the likes of team physio Nick Jones and head coach Andrew McDonald had assumed the very worst in terms of Kuhnemann’s availability for Sri Lanka.
McDonald and fellow selectors George Bailey and Tony Dodemaide were casting around for all options as they waited for an outcome on Kuhnemann’s recovery, from adding another off spinner in Corey Rocchiccioli to drafting in a leg-spinner, Mitchell Swepson or Tanveer Sangha.
“I’m not sure where we would’ve ended up, it was a good thing he got the all-clear to come over,” McDonald said. “We went into a bit of a holding pattern around that, obviously on the back of the surgeon’s review there was a possibility [of him touring].
“So that all unfolded late and geez, was he a possibility, he went out there and performed, he had no inhibitions leading in around fielding, it was a real surprise for me. I don’t know how it works really, I thought he was gone. But as it progressed and got closer to the Test match, he was pretty much a lock three days out.
“Not sure where we would’ve ended up but there were plenty of conversations around potentials, possibles, leg-spin, finger-spin, two off-spinners, which we played in Nagpur before. So they were unfolding, but Matt solved the lot. Outstanding performance.”
In 2023, India’s recently retired master spinner Ravichandran Ashwin spoke of how Kuhnemann’s wrist-work gave him a point of difference from other left-armers.
“An interesting feature of his action is his loading,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel. “For Kuhnemann, his wrist breaks during his loading. So sometimes it will look like there is an elbow extension. There is nothing like that in his action. But there is wrist involvement, for sure.
“Because of this wrist involvement, the ball will come down faster. Since there is extra involvement of his wrists, the disadvantage is that since the wrist is coming down, and since there is not enough wrist and finger behind the ball, sometimes the ball comes down slowly.
“And if the wicket is slow, you can adjust and play him easily. I am saying this because I have also done this wrist-breaking in my career. However, he is getting that drop. He is a left-arm spinner on his first tour. He bowled really well in Delhi and Indore. Of course, the wicket in Ahmedabad was a bit tough to bowl. Even on that hard surface, he bowled really well.”
Nathan Lyon, Todd Murphy and Kuhnemann are now an Australian spin bowling triumvirate that stands a chance, in 2027, of delivering the team’s first series win in India for more than two decades.
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