Going for the knockout punch

After more than a month of 45 matches in the league phase of the 2019 World Cup, the business end of the tournament is finally here. Just three matches remain in the tournament—the most significant matches of them all. Doing (or not doing) well in these matches can leave deep imprints in the collective memory of fans and in the annals of cricketing history. Have a doubt? Ask South Africa or New Zealand. The former usually do well in the group stages and the mere mention of the word “knockout” is enough to bring out their worst—or at least, that is what conventional wisdom says. This time though, they haven’t made it this far. The Kiwis, on the other hand, are perennial overachievers, often making it to the semifinals of a major tournament ahead of much-fancied sides with greater resources. This time too, they have sneaked through in fourth place.

In the next three matches, league position counts for zilch. Nada. Or nothing, if you want to use plain English. Knockout matches typically tend to be tense, cagey affairs where the formbook can be thrown out of the window, and teams have traditionally chosen to bat first to impose scoreboard pressure on their opponents. Given all this, what can India do to maximize chances of victory come next Sunday?

Initially, it seemed that injuries may have thrown the team off balance. Shikhar Dhawan’s injury was no doubt a big setback but K L Rahul has taken baby steps towards stepping into the southpaw’s very big shoes in ICC tournaments; although, Rahul is a bit similar to Rohit Sharma at the top of the order (both take their time to get going) and this puts undue pressure on the rest of the team. Similarly, Bhuvi’s injury lengthened India’s tail to Hanuman-esque proportions but Shami’s bowling has been a revelation. The muddle at number 4 still exists but Rishabh Pant’s inclusion seems to have injected some power and dynamism into the side.

In terms of results and performance with respect to expectation though, there is very little that has surprised fans about the Indian team performance. For instance, we did know that Bumrah was one of the best bowlers in the world—his showing has only reinforced this fact. Similarly, the team being reliant on the top order wasn’t a major mystery either. While India closed out two tight games against Bangladesh and Afghanistan (games that they may have lost 20 years ago due to lack of quality bowling personnel), the reverse against England once again exposed the chronic deficiencies of this team which shouldn’t be swept under the carpet after a couple of easy wins. The soft underbelly of the team that is the middle order still is an issue and God forbid, should the top order have an off day, the team will mostly fall short of its target. The other issue is that of taking wickets in the first half of the innings, which leaves India playing catch-up with respect to the game. In the knockouts, they will be playing against (possibly) two formidable opponents who can exploit these weakness to their advantage.

Therefore, to do well one has to pay heed to some surprising trends that have played out a bit differently compared to expectation, particularly as the tournament has progressed. Over the last 4 years, until this World Cup, England has been the second-most expensive place for non-home bowlers (behind Pakistan, where only a paltry 3 matches have been played), with bowlers conceding 6.21 runs per over. Some of it is no doubt due to the belligerence of the England team, but simultaneously, it is also true that England is also the second-most expensive place for home bowlers as well (also behind Pakistan), at 5.88 runs per over. At this World Cup though, the average runs per over has been 5.63, with five teams below this figure. Meaning, the pitches haven’t been as flat as one would have initially feared.

Second, though 5.63 corresponds to a score of ~281, there has been a distinct advantage in batting first if a decent score is posted on the board. This tournament has produced 25 scores of 250 and above in the first innings of the 45 matches. Of these matches, only two (West Indies and Sri Lanka) have been lost by the team batting first, suggesting that the par-score is much lesser than the suggested 281 and that scoreboard pressure has had an influence so far. With jaded pitches, one can expect this to be exacerbated in the final 3 matches.

Third, the effectiveness of spinners has only come down as the tournament progressed. Between the 2015 and 2019 World cups, fast bowlers and some leg spinners had done well in England. But if one were to examine the statistics from the first and second halves of the league phase, they are as different as chalk and cheese; in the former, leg spinners have held their own with the fast men but in the space of a couple of weeks, the their returns have been less flattering. Therefore, it is time to re-think the two spinners strategy.

Therefore, for India, the way to go is to make minor changes to increase their chances of victory. See out the new ball challenge against Starc, Boult, Archer and co. with a mix of caution and calculated aggression, with one of the top 3 staying on till the 35^th over (Kohli is due for a big score and Rohit Sharma might not convert one of these days); if batting first and in a favourable position, push Dhoni down to 7; if the team loses 2-3 wickets cheaply, promote him up to absorb the blow and set a platform; the batting order in the second innings will depend on the RPO and this should be decided run-time; play 3 pacers with Shami opening the bowling and bowling out his quota early, and Bhuvi and Bumrah to operate at the death; go with only one tweaker, and to fight England on their own terms, play Jadeja as the spinner to lengthen the batting order with Bhuvi coming in at 9. Though this is no guarantee for victory or performance, it is based on how this tournament has played out and will mitigate some of the weaknesses that India has, thus increasing the odds of success.

 

 

 

 

 

 

India’s ODI opening bowling woes

 

Starting trouble: Bhuvi hasn’t been as effective as he would like to be with the new ball. Image source: 1

 

With due apologies to Zimbabwe, who have been pencilled in to visit India in March, just 13 high quality matches remain (3 and 5 away to Australia, followed by 5 home matches against Australia) before the 2019 World Cup in England. Meaning, not a lot of time is left for getting the formula right in time for the World Cup.

Expectations from the Indian fan has changed too, with the Indian ODI side performing consistently well. Eight years ago, the famous World Cup victory in Mumbai seemed like a tryst with destiny, with the stars aligning for MS Dhoni’s team. Now, with strong showings in multi-team tournaments and in ODI tournaments away (such as South Africa and England) since then, it would not be an understatement to say that a semifinal appearance (as it happened in the 2015 World Cup) would most likely be branded as a failure. India’s present position in the ICC ODI rankings (in second place, behind England and well ahead of New Zealand’s third place) is justified.

The pieces have largely fallen in place too; with Ambati Rayudu having made a powerful claim towards solving the middle order riddle, just a few chinks in the armour remain in the ODI juggernaut that is the Indian cricket team. The issue of MS Dhoni’s ODI form is likely to be thorny, but he will most likely be given a free pass to the World Cup. With his place beyond question, the issue of India’s new ball bowler occupies the limelight.

A cursory look at the ICC ODI rankings reveals the extent of this problem. Granted, the ICC rankings aren’t perfect, but it does give a quick indication about which way the “form” wind is blowing. India’s pace spearhead, Jasprit Bumrah, leads the pack comfortably, with the two Indian wrist spinners in the top 6. But it is quite slim pickings after that, with Bhuvaneshwar Kumar occupying the lowly 24^th spot, (on 590 rating points). Don’t be fooled by the official ICC spiel though—it is quite misleading. Take a look for yourself and do the math:

Q: What does it mean to have, say, 500 points?

A: Ratings points have a meaning in the same way as traditional averages do. Over 900 points is a supreme achievement. Few players get there, and even fewer stay there for long. 750 plus is normally enough to put a player in the world top ten. 500 plus is a good, solid rating

With only a handful of teams playing top quality cricket (~10 teams with 5 bowlers each), 24^th spot is therefore only a middling return, a whole new world away from world class levels.

As the ICC rankings have revealed similarly, over the last two years, many bowlers have done quite well in the opening position. However, there are very few Indian faces among them. Looking at the bowling averages of players who have nabbed at least 20 wickets in the first two bowling positions (i.e. taking the new ball), Bumrah and Woakes have been standout performers, along with Starc, Hazlewood and Boult. India’s other representative, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, props up the table with a below-par bowling average of 38.

I must admit that it is a tad harsh to point fingers at Bhuvi alone. Make no mistake, he’s shown fantastic nous at the death (as has Bumrah), but the lack of sting at the beginning has come to haunt India many times (2017 Champions Trophy final, anyone?). Over the last 3 years, India lags England, South Africa and New Zealand in terms of wicket taking with the new ball and this is a major weakness for a side that harbours ambitions of leaving behind a lasting legacy.

There is an additional angle to this problem, which is revealed by the ICC batting ODI rankings. One look at the batting rankings reveals that the last few years has been the era of the top order batsman (interested readers could peruse a detailed analysis of top order run inflation here). Of the top 20 spots, the only non-top order batsmen mixing it with the batting elite from the top order are Ross Taylor, Mushfiqur Rahim, Jos Buttler and Eoin Morgan—slim pickings overall. As ODI teams become more top heavy, taking wickets with the new ball and exposing the relatively fragile middle order is crucial to knock the wind out of the power hitting ODI teams of today; as it is, two new balls and smaller grounds have only complicated this problem.

This is not to say that India have not tried. In fact, they have tried many combinations since the last World Cup but no one apart from Bumrah has stuck. For instance, the Hardik Pandya new ball experiment was tried and abandoned some time ago. Mohammed Shami has hardly bowled in ODIs after playing through the pain barrier in the 2015 World Cup. Umesh Yadav sparkled with the new ball in the previous IPL but it hasn’t quite translated into team India ODI performances. Siddharth Kaul, Khaleel Ahmed and Deepak Chahar have been given chances but only Khaleel has shown glimpses of what he’s capable of (against West Indies). At some point, the team management must be hoping that one of these changes works out. After all, there is only so much clawing back that Bumrah, Kuldeep and Chahal can do. If Khaleel Ahmed can impress on the Australia tour, the slot will practically be his; his left arm angle is an added advantage as well.

Jasprit Bumrah has rightly earned himself a rest after a gruelling year and Mohammed Siraj has been named in his place for the upcoming fixtures against Australia and New Zealand. With India’s top pacer sitting out two tough assignments, this is a golden opportunity for a new face to grab the limelight and solve this long-standing Achilles heel at the earliest. If the Indian team doesn’t find an answer to this issue, it can rear its ugly head during an important knockout match, thus bringing an end to its World Cup hopes.

Disclaimer: The image used is not property of this blog. It has been used for representational purposes only. The copyright, if any, rests with the respective owners.

 

Indian wrist spinners no longer second class ODI citizens

Ignored no more: Anil Kumble suffered a bias against wrist spinners throughout his ODI career. Image source: 1.

The shoe is finally on the other foot.

For years now, wrist spinners in India had to wonder what they had to do to get the selectors’ attention. After Anil Kumble’s last one day international (ODI) in 2007 till the end of 2015, a grand total of three wrist spinners had played for India in ODIs (not counting the batsmen-turned-part-timers, of course). In case you’re wondering about their names, they are Piyush Chawla, Amit Mishra and Karn Sharma—who played a cumulative 55 ODIs in these 8 odd years.  Spare a thought for poor ol’ Amit Mishra—the man with an ODI average of under 27, and the Indian with the most IPL wickets—but hardly got a chance to play against the big boys.

Player name	Matches played	Wickets	Bowling average
Amit Mishra	28	47	26.14
Piyush Chawla	25	32	34.90
Karn Sharma	2	0	–

Table 1: List of Indian wrist spinners who played for India in the ODI format between 20th March 2007 and 31st December 2015

Coincidentally, Indian badminton has experienced an upswing since 2007. Is this due to a case of young boys with powerful wrists taking up the game after being dissuaded by the fates of Indian wrist spinners unfolding on and off the field? Jokes aside, back then, it wasn’t a stretch to call Indian wrist spinners as second class ODI citizens. Why, even during the peerless Anil Kumble’s playing career, after Harbhajan Singh burst on to the scene, the legend didn’t feature many times in the Indian team—missing 153 games in the process.

If one had switched on the television or an online stream to watch the latest ODI series featuring India, he/she would have certainly wondered what the fuss is all about. With Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal spinning a web against the Sri Lankans and the Aussies in the middle overs, the hard times faced by the practitioners of wrist spin seemed to be a distant memory; even forgotten, perhaps. However, old timers will note that the dark decades of the ‘70s and ‘80s were the worst for a wrist spinner when they were on the list of endangered species all over the cricketing world.

Spin bowling started losing favour in the early 1970s. John Snow headlined the 1970-71 and 1972 Ashes with Derek Underwood playing a parsimonious support act. A few years later, after losing test matches against the Australians and Indians in the 1975-76 season, Clive Lloyd’s West Indies turned to build a four-man demolition squad of fast bowlers which would terrorize batsmen world over for more than a generation. Naturally, other teams followed suit with fast bowlers of their own; even India, who often opened with a gentle medium pacer before tossing the ball to the members of the spin quartet, had found Kapil Dev in the golden age of fast bowling. The ones to suffer from this fast bowling tilt were the spin bowlers, and the situation only turned from bad to worse during the subsequent decade of the 1980s.

Particularly, one of the most difficult cricketing skills to master—wrist spin—had few takers during the dark decades of the ‘70s and ’80s when Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir was fighting a lone battle to keep the art alive. Since wrist spin involves spinning the ball using a full flick of the wrist and fingers, it is notoriously difficult to control and even more difficult to master. Invariably, a wrist spinner would bowl a bad delivery every other over which would duly be dispatched to the boundary. Hence, they were often labelled as high risk options, especially with teams coming to grips with ODI format where run containment was a premium. In the aforementioned time period of ‘70s and ’80s, fast bowling was seen as the key to test match success and spin was largely relegated to a defensive role; there were fears that wrist spin would totally disappear from the circuit. Batting skills against spin also took a backseat.

	Player name	Matches	Wickets	Bowling average
1	Abdul Qadir	57	216	32.31
2	RJ Shastri	69	141	39.51
3	Iqbal Qasim	32	131	24.99
4	JE Emburey	55	120	39.65
5	B Yardley	19	89	28.64
6	Tauseef Ahmed	28	87	29.57
7	JG Bracewell	35	82	37.28
8	Maninder Singh	34	81	38.8
9	PH Edmonds	33	76	39.76
10	DR Doshi	23	74	34.35
11	NS Yadav	26	70	38.71
12	SL Boock	21	57	35.22
13	NGB Cook	15	52	32.48
14	RJ Bright	20	46	41.13
15	RA Harper	24	45	27.82
16	ND Hirwani	7	42	20.71

Table 2: List of spinners who captured the most test wickets in between 1st January 1980 and 31st December 1989.

The list of spin bowling wicket takers in the trough of the 1980s tells the tale of wrist spinning gloom and doom. Ploughing a lonely furrow for the tribe of wrist spinners, the effervescent Abdul Qadir is perched firmly at the top with 216 wickets at a bowling average of 32.31; Ravi Shastri, with 141 victims off his left-arm-whatever at a bowling average of nearly 40, followed. Fourteen more finger spinners dot the list after Abdul Qadir, before the next wrist spinner appears in this list, namely Narendra Hirwani—who snared 42 wickets (16 of them in one game). Finger spinners were dotting the team sheets with such regularity that drinking games involving their inevitable selection could have been invented.

The face of wrist spin would change with the emergence of Shane Warne, Anil Kumble, Mushtaq Ahmed and co. in the 1990s. For nearly a decade and half, they bamboozled batsmen with their guile, control and variations. Shane Warne dragging Australia back from the dead in the 1999 World Cup semifinal and Anil Kumble bundling out six Windies for 12 runs are fond memories of that era. Unfortunately, after their retirement, wrist spin went underground for a few years yet again. In the era of ODI cricket that followed the retirement of the various wrist spinning doyens, the field turned barren with captains choosing safety and miserly spinners of the orthodox and mystery variety. However, in what has been a pleasant twist, the art-form has seen a renaissance in recent times. The lessons from the slam-bang nature of T20 and the fielding restrictions in the middle overs of the ODIs (hitherto the “boring” part of the ODI) have turned the situation on its head.

Player name	Matches	Wickets	Bowling average
Imran Tahir	40	62	27.67
AU Rashid	46	68	32.05
A Zampa	26	37	32.62
MJ Santner	37	38	37.07
M M Ali	41	28	59.50

Table 3: List of ODI spin bowlers with the best bowling averages since 1^st April 2015 against the top 9 ODI nations (minimum 25 wickets). All stats accurate till 4^th October 2017

Since the 2015 World cup, finger spinners have found the going tough in ODI cricket. The most successful spin bowlers since the last World cup have all been wrist spinners (minimum of 25 wickets against the top 9 ODI teams). In what has been a clear role reversal, New Zealand’s Mitchell Santner has been the only reasonably successful (if you can call it that) finger spinner at a bowling average of ~37. After getting drubbed in the recent Champions Trophy final against Pakistan, though a bit late to the game, it is no wonder that India turned to wrist spinners of their own.

This recent revival of wrist spin in ODIs has been due to a host of factors. One, pitches all over the world have been flat with the conditions being loaded in the favour of batsmen (the average score since 1^st April 2015 has been 272 runs); fielding restrictions have only added fuel to the fire with fewer boundary riders in the middle overs—meaning, today’s batsmen are going hell for leather more than ever; factors such as dew—which are almost a given during day-night matches held in the subcontinent—make it more difficult for the finger spinner to thrive.

Therefore, in today’s times, the best antidote for aggressive batsmen (the majority of whom are right handers) is to impart more spin on the ball and take it away from their preferred hitting zones on the leg side. Funnily, wrist spin needed batting to evolve to current T20-fuelled ballistic levels and to be countered with a high risk, high reward bowling deterrent.  With the spinning of the powerplay wheel and a combination of other factors, wrist spinners are surviving and thriving by remaining relevant even on the dreariest of surfaces in the shorter formats. It is early days still, but following worldwide trends, Indian wrist spinners are perhaps no longer second class ODI citizens.

Disclaimer: The image used in this article is not property of this blog. It has been used for representational purposes only. The copyright, if any, rests solely with its owners.