New Delhi: Normally, the first six overs of a T20 game are a cue for madness. Field restrictions are in place, the hard new ball flies off the bat and the openers, with all the wickets in hand, have the license to thrill. A good start is not always essential, but it helps.
But that is normally. For, in this T20 World Cup, India, so used to Abhishek Sharma and Co going berserk first up, have been stumped by a tactic with old roots – the batters have been given no pace to work with.
It started in the match against Pakistan. India won the game easily but Salman Agha’s spin in the first over opened the door for other teams too. The Pakistan skipper doesn’t bowl much and with five spinners in the eleven, it adds up. But on that day, he took the new ball.
From a match-up perspective, it made sense. An off-spinner turning the ball away from the two left-handed openers. The pitch offered some turn too and it immediately planted a doubt in the minds of the India openers. Do they attack? Do they wait to see how the pitch behaves? Do they come down the wicket?
To add to their problems, Agha got the ball to drift in as well. He wasn’t firing it in. The unsure batters played him carefully – straining at the leash but held back by the subtle variations.
Then, off the last ball of the over, Abhishek decided to chance his arm but ended up hitting the ball straight to mid-on. Back-to-back ducks for the opener and a boost for Pakistan.
The pattern has repeated itself since. In the game against Netherlands, off-spinner Aryan Dutt picked up where Agha left off. Three runs and a wicket (Abhishek) in the first over. At the end of the Powerplay, his bowling figures read an impressive 3-0-17-2.
South Africa repeated the finger-spinner dose. They turned to Aiden Markram and he too delivered with a wicket (Ishan Kishan) while conceding just five runs.
“I mean we’ve watched other games and it was just something that… it was nice to just have both left-handers, you’ve got the ball spinning away,” said South Africa’s David Miller after the big Super 8 game win over India. “It gives some sort of option where if it’s not turning it can go straight through the gate, or if it does hold a little bit like it did, it gives you that hope that we can get a wicket in the first over.”
Over the last two years, India have scored 56/2 on an average in the Powerplay. Only Australia (59/2) and England (58/2) have consistently made more. But the use of a spinner to open the bowling has clearly put a spanner in the works.
It has surprised India but not in the manner New Zealand shocked everyone during the 1992 ODI World Cup.
In the first match of the tournament, co-hosts Australia and New Zealand were facing off in Auckland. The Kiwis, batting first, made 248/6. A challenging total in that era but no one put it beyond Australia.
That is when NZ skipper Martin Crowe sprung a surprise by asking off-spinner Dipak Patel to bowl the second over of the innings. The off-side was packed with fielders and the batters were challenged to take the risk. Caught in two minds, the move killed the early momentum of the Aussie innings and NZ won by 37 runs.
Patel, with his combination of tight lines and subtle changes of pace, would open the bowling throughout NZ’s nine-match campaign and finished with 8 wickets at an economy rate of 3.10. Only West Indies pacer Patrick Patterson had a better economy rate (2.50), but he played just one game.
The cat-and-mouse game worked for NZ but the tactic found few takers in the years to follow. Mohammad Hafeez, Abdur Razzak and Ray Price were given a go regularly but most other captains preferred to use pace.
This, however, started to change in the T20 era. With batters being asked to go the ultra-aggressive route, the subtle variations of a spinner can be just as dangerous as swing and seam movement. More so, if the batters can’t figure out which way the ball is going to turn.
One of the first spinners to truly leave an impact in T20s as a new-ball bowler was Samuel Badree. The leg-spinner, who represented West Indies, opened the attack for them in the 2012 and 2016 World Cup finals, and his mix of googlies, sliders and cross-seam deliveries was always a handful. It delivered Windies both the finals.
In the Powerplay, tight lines and the pace of delivery is crucial. The bowler needs to be quick enough so that the batters don’t have time to come down the wicket. Keep them in the crease, get one to turn and the spinner is in business. The new ball also tends to skid on to the batters.
This is the way Badree operated and it has been the template many spinners, including India’s R Ashwin and Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan, followed.
Afghanistan’s Mujeeb Ur Rahman has the pace and the mystery to keep the tradition alive, but big-stage performances go a long way toward showing that guts and guile can be just as deadly as pace.
