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Rohit Sharma’s glare spoke louder than what followed: “Why not four spinners?” It was a response to the question: “Why four spinners?” And at a press conference before boarding the flight to New York, he explained: “I don’t want to go into detail on this. It is true that we wanted four spinners. There are technical aspects involved, which I won’t divulge now.”
In retrospect, it was an easy decision. The Caribbean Islands are familiar ground for Sharma and co and they knew the balls would get lower, slower and curved as the tournament progressed. A little over four weeks later, that decision has turned out to be a masterful one, making the difference between India and a few other matches. If India’s pastry trio grabbed most of the bouquet in the group matches, it was the spin trio that really took flight and spread their wings in the later matches and the semi-finals of the Super Eights.
It’s a strange trio. They’re all left-handed. Akshar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja preach a semi-orthodox technique, though with different builds, release points, pace control, preferred lengths, variations and thought processes. Kuldeep Yadav is an exception, confounding people with his wrist mystique. The left-arm spinners’ wide range includes three different worlds. It would have been tempting to swap one of them (perhaps Jadeja or Patel) for leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal. But Sharma and the team management resisted the temptation to revert to that type.
Use spinners wisely
But what matters is how cleverly Sharma has used them, knowing when, where and how to use them. Yadav is the designated disruptive ball, given the freedom to play bold and daring. He often gets the freedom not to take into account the nature of the court surface and choose his end depending on which side the cross wind is blowing from, thereby maximising the drift generated. There is an implicit promise that he cannot let the batsmen freeload with the ball that releases pressure. The field is often aggressive and he has repaid Sharma’s faith with unwavering consistency (10 wickets at 9.40, economy rate 5.40). His accuracy and discipline combined with drifts and dips (though he does not bowl as boldly as before) have taken batsmen by surprise. Glenn Maxwell will have nightmares of the errant ball that engulfed him in St Lucia. When bowling the flattest ball, he was the most fearsome spinner. Sharma calls him one of the two “gun spinners” under his command. The other is Patel.
The left-arm spinner has been his go-to in any season. He can play multiple roles, bowling in the powerplay, as he did against England, tightening up the batsmen in the middle and switching between striking and support bowling. Of his spinners, Patel has played the most stumps and he is the best at using the crease and varying his release point. So early in the fourth over against England, Sharma bowled him. Jos Buttler had just smashed Arshdeep Singh for three fours, but Patel erased England’s best chance of chasing with one ball.
The ball was not spectacular. Patel bowled a flat ball from outside the crease, as if anticipating a reverse sweep. He did just that, but the ball sank and arrived at a much slower pace than Buttler had anticipated. That he toedged rather than top-edged shows how quickly England’s batsmen had gotten short. There was no magic or wonder in the ball, just an enchanting accuracy, a shocking simplicity, a roar that says you don’t need to have lots of variations to get wickets. He dismissed Jonny Bairstow with another simple, non-spinning ball that slammed into the stumps. This is how Patel takes wickets. It’s daylight robbery, letting him take wickets even when you know in plain sight what he can and can’t do. If the batsman expects his delivery to slip, he slows it down. And if the batsman expects his delivery to slow down, he loses to the force of the slip, not his speed.
Jedi cameo
The pairing has limited Ravindra Jadeja to a cameo role – he is no longer the prince of parsimony he once sacrificed on his way to the Test match summit – but apart from his batting prowess he also displays confidence, leadership and composure under pressure.
Sharma was able to include both Jediah and Patel in the 11 largely because of their batting skills. Suddenly the team boasted great balance. There were three spinners, two of whom could attack the boundary line, three seamers, one of whom could bat powerfully. Four bowled left-handed and two right-handed. Sharma had the ammunition to blow away opponents on any course. New York was seam-friendly so he opened up the seamers, St Lucia was shirt-front so he used his best bowlers, Bumrah and Yadav, who could transcend the pitch. Guyana was spinner-friendly so he pushed Patel to the front. It was a classic example of a skilled captain leading a skilled bowling team. Now he has an eloquent answer to the spinners’ question.
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