Wednesday evening in Thiruvananthapuram was all about the bowlers. Pacers, in particular, for this was one of those rare T20 games where the ball did more than it ordinarily does in the shortest format. So much so, after his struggles in recent games, Bhuvneshwar Kumar would have loved to bowl on that wicket. Yet he had to contend with resting and watching the game on television.
In his absence, Deepak Chahar showed us how he isn’t any less fearsome in the art of new-ball bowling. Whether the Indian selectors (and team management) have bet on the wrong horse for a second T20 World Cup running is a debate for another day. Then, there was Arshdeep Singh. Returning from the lows of the Asia Cup, he put in a stellar performance that should land him straight into India’s starting XI for the World Cup opener on 23 October.
Chahar and Singh had the ball on a string. At 9/5 (for clarity, that’s five down for nine runs), it didn’t matter that India were missing Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya and Kumar. In T20 cricket, that is a knockout blow you don’t recover from.
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And the 107-run target was never going to be enough. It did give South Africa something to bowl at. Anrich Nortje and Kagiso Rabada make for a potent threat, and it showed as India crawled to its lowest powerplay score in T20I history.
Such was the rarity of these conditions that you don’t ever anticipate seeing 17/1 after six powerplay overs. KL Rahul was on 11 not out off 26 balls at that time. Usually he gets a lot of stick for slow, progressive batting at the top. On the night, his approach was right on the money. If you expected India to knock off those 107 runs as if they were chasing net run-rate, it was never going to happen. The conditions, especially with the new ball, were too bowler friendly to allow such a chase.
What Rahul did was par for course on that wicket especially considering how Rabada-Nortje were getting the ball to dance around. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli struggled for good reason, and it makes Rahul’s long stay at the wicket even more impressive. Even so, this was the proverbial day to proclaim that there has been a tectonic shift in India’s T20I batting prowess. This trio no longer hold India’s fortunes in hand – that responsibility has passed on to Suryakumar Yadav.
Sample this. The first ball ‘SKY’ faced from Nortje was a 143-clicks snorter that rose up from length and he only managed to get some bat on it. The next two deliveries were nonchalantly deposited for sixes – the first swivelled top-edged over square leg and the second coming off the middle. In three deliveries, SKY had measured up Nortje’s pace and used it to his benefit. Further, he had scored a third of India’s total runs, more than previously managed in four overs.
How does he do it? What is so different about the style with which SKY bats? It is not just slam-bang cricket, for there is a method to his madness. Otherwise, it wouldn’t produce such consistent results, whether in run scoring or in terms of strike-rate. That latter bit is imperative in T20 cricket and SKY delivers on that front – a whopping career strike-rate of 170-plus.
The key, if you can call it that, is his lack of footwork. With perfect hand-eye coordination, SKY tends to use the speed of the delivery when facing pacers. Mostly, he will not hit against the line. Instead, he uses the trajectory of the delivery and outwits the fast bowlers. It explains his unorthodox hitting against pace, and why he tends to play more orthodox cricket against spinners. In the second scenario, he uses his footwork and depth of crease to great effect. The combination of these aspects is what makes SKY so effective in T20 cricket at present.
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