The first week of 2022 Indian Premier League has been about one pattern. Win the toss, opt to bowl and use the dewy conditions to your advantage. A side batting first has won only one out of eight games in seven days, and that was when the hapless Sunrisers Hyderabad bowed down to a 200-plus total in Pune.
For T20 purists (yes, they do exist), this is an exasperating situation. The contest between bat and ball isn’t even. The night games start at 7.30 pm IST and it means the second innings mostly take place when the Maharashtra outfields are laden with dew. And thereby the toss decision becomes very predictable – win and bowl. It is just a matter of which side the coin lands on.
If there is one way to counter this, then that’s going hammer and tongs. Teams batting first need to understand that the safety of a 200-plus target is the only guarantee against that ill-fated coin toss. Rajasthan did this, and succeeded. Kolkata Knight Riders tried it against Royal Challengers Bangalore and failed. On Friday, Punjab Kings tried the same methodology against Kolkata, and failed too. That’s a 33.33 per cent success rate so far.
Not every team possesses what these three teams do with the exception of Lucknow Super Giants. The likes of Delhi Capitals, Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings have lost a lot of their batting might, and they were never the slam-bang type to begin with. Take, for example, RCB in their first game or even CSK against Lucknow. Both teams needed the full might of their batting line-ups to click in order to post 200-plus and it still wasn’t enough as both teams ended up losing.
As such, it creates a variation in batting strategies and approaches across the board. You have four teams trying to get their act together, while there are those who have bought power-hitters and will go on a leather hunt. The likes of Kolkata and Punjab take it a further notch up – they live and die by the sword. All batters are in attack mode, full stop.
It becomes a matter of generating batting momentum, or stopping your opposition from doing so, if you won the toss and opted to bowl. Against RCB, Kolkata suffered at the hands of pacers and could never get going. They finished with a sub-par total and despite fighting well, ran out of steam. It was the same script on Friday, just flipped the other way round. This time Punjab was on the receiving end, and Kolkata gained for once. The common thread – pacers destroyed Punjab as well.
Within the toss/dew theme, this could be another aspect to play out during the 2022 IPL. Pacers bowling at 7.30 pm will have a direct bearing on the game, when there is just enough moisture in the air for some swing. Mohammed Shami destroyed Lucknow’s top-order. Trent Boult-Prasidh Krishna did so to Sunrisers Hyderabad. Kolkata suffered at the hands of Akash Deep and Mohammed Siraj, and then had Umesh Yadav-Tim Southee return the favour to Punjab.
One among these pacers has got a fresh lease of life in Maharashtra’s dewy conditions. Yadav now sits top of the bowling charts with eight wickets in three games. He has bowled full spells in all three games and struck at an amazing average of 7.38. If he can sustain this bowling form, he will in contention for the Purple Cap and help rocket Kolkata to the knockouts.
Shreyas Iyer and Brendon McCullum have been key in getting the best out of Yadav. Kolkata have used him to a set plan, and that is to avoid bowling him at the death. They have identified early movement as his core strength, thus deploying him at the start and in the middle overs. The death overs’ responsibility has been given to Andre Russell and Southee. When Pat Cummins arrives, he will possibly bowl at the death too. But not Yadav, not too much any way.
Yadav is not your quintessential swing bowler. It isn’t natural swing, like in the case of Ishant Sharma-Bhuvneshwar Kumar, or from hitting the deck hard, like with Jasprit Bumrah-Shami. Yadav’s movement is generated from pace. If he is in good rhythm, he will get the ball to move, both old and new. If he is not, he looses control and goes for runs. So far that latter bit hasn’t happened.
Credit is due to him, particularly because Yadav identifies this core strength. Very early into his career, he recognised the need to stay fit in order to bowl fast and that is the reason why there hasn’t been a drop in pace even with age. Time and again this season, Yadav has credited his trainers for keeping him in shape.
So, what does this form do for Yadav? By admission, he has been reduced to a single format, and that too he is a bench bowler in Test cricket. Despite Ishant’s relegation from the Test squad, Yadav only gets a look in if Bumrah, Shami and Siraj do not click together. Can good IPL form change this for him?
Perhaps, or perhaps not, for India do not play too many Tests in the next 12-15 months. There is a T20 World Cup in Australia though, where hard pitches will need bowlers who can hit the deck and get movement off the surface at pace. The IPL has given tickets to the international stage to many youngsters.
For Yadav, it could be a case of career resurrection, especially in white-ball cricket. Question is, can he sustain this form?
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