India Cricket stats and analysis from CricViz (page 1 of 4)

CricViz Analysis: Rishabh Pant

July 5, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog /by Patrick Noone

Patrick Noone looks at India’s unorthodox talent

There are not many batsmen in world cricket whose signature shot is the aerial flick over fine leg. There are not many left-handers who more or less totally eschew the off drive, preferring to play square on the off-side or to shuffle across and work to leg in order to manoeuvre the field.

Rishabh Pant is no ordinary batsman though and his idiosyncratic technique, allied to a fearlessly audacious mindset make him one of the most exciting young talents in the modern game.

Originally left out of India’s World Cup squad, Pant was called up as a replacement after an injury to Shikhar Dhawan, and eventually made his tournament bow against England at Edgbaston. In his innings against the hosts, and the subsequent knock against Bangladesh two days later on the same ground, Pant showed glimpses of the undoubted talent he possesses.

His scoring areas from those two innings make for peculiar reading. Every ball he faced against England was from a right-arm seamer bowling from over the wicket, while 20 of the 41 he faced against Bangladesh fell into that category, meaning 49 of the 70 balls he’s faced have been from that angle. As a left-hander, with the ball angling across him, the area through mid-off would be an obvious scoring area against balls on a good length or fuller. But as yet, Pant has not scored a single run through that area.

As the beehive shows, Pant has been willing to play even the very widest balls he’s faced from right-arm quicks through the leg-side, hitting the ball where the fielders aren’t and finding ever more inventive ways to score. That technique makes it close to impossible to set a field to him as he’s capable of hitting almost any ball to any part of the ground. The reason he’s yet to score a run through mid-off is likely because there’s always a fielder there, but which captain would be brave enough to take that fielder out? Surely then, Pant would start scoring through that region for fun.

Pant’s unorthodoxy stems from a constant willingness to score. He is, in cricketing parlance, a ‘busy’ player, always looking for ways to either rotate the strike or hit a boundary. Of the players in India’s squad to have faced 50 balls or more in this tournament, only Hardik Pandya has attacked more often than Pant. Hardik’s role as the big-hitting finisher is clear, and it’s to be expected that his attacking shot percentage would be high, destroying bowlers during the death overs. But Pant has done the bulk of his work through the middle overs, never allowing India’s momentum to drop.

Any cricket fan who has followed the IPL closely will have known about Pant’s precocious talents for a while. He has scored at a strike rate in excess of 160 in each of the last three seasons for the Delhi franchise, with the highlight being his blistering 128 from just 63 balls against Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2018.

However, despite those displays, and indeed his near-seamless introduction to the Test arena, Pant is still dogged by criticisms about a lack of maturity and a tendency to throw his wicket away when set. It’s easy to forget that we are talking about a 21-year-old who will find that maturity in time but, until then, should be allowed to play his own way – the way that has brought him so much success, even at this early stage of his career.

From the outside looking in, it appears that India do not always fully appreciate the player they have on their hands. All of the great modern batsmen they have produced, from Gavaskar to Tendulkar to Kohli have been orthodox in style, simply doing ordinary things to an extraordinarily high level. They have arguably never had a maverick talent in Pant’s mould, even Virender Sehwag was ultra-aggressive, rather than truly unorthodox. He still has a long way to go to match the achievements of any of those names, of course, but with India’s top order one of the most secure in world cricket, there is no reason to not let him thrive in the middle order.

Pant has had to wait to get his chance on the world stage, but the stars have aligned for him to play a key role in the business end of the tournament. India will hope they have three more matches for him to star in, starting with Saturday’s final group game against Sri Lanka at Headingley. Given the flashes of potential he’s already shown in his two innings so far, and the ease with which he has taken to the big stage, you’d be brave to bet against him having a big impact on the remainder of India’s campaign.

India have a genius in their ranks; a batsman with limitless potential who should become a mainstay of their team across all three formats. This tournament is merely one of the early chapters in Pant’s story; there are surely plenty more to come.

Patrick Noone is an analyst at CricViz.

@patnoonecricket

CricViz Analysis: Jasprit Bumrah’s Double Wicket-Maiden

June 27, 2019/0 Comments/in Blog /by Patrick Noone

Patrick Noone analyses the six balls that clinched the game for India at Old Trafford

Sport is about moments. The moments that define matches, tournaments, even careers. We talk about ‘big game players’ who routinely step up and deliver such moments to seize the initiative, change the course of a match or make the crucial contribution at the crucial time to turn the game in their team’s favour.

In Jasprit Bumrah, India have a bowler who produces this kind of moment with such regularity that his career is starting to resemble a highlights package of match-defining balls, wickets or spells.

In the penultimate over of India’s last outing in this World Cup, with Afghanistan needing 21 runs from 12 balls, Bumrah delivered five perfect yorkers and a low full toss that cost him just five runs, leaving Afghanistan with too much to do in the final over.

Today, Bumrah’s killer blow to West Indies’ hopes of chasing 269 came in the form of a double-wicket maiden in the 27^th over. In truth, the stakes were not as high today in Manchester as they were on Saturday in Southampton. It was the middle of the innings and West Indies had already been reduced to 107-5 when Bumrah began the second over of his second spell.

But in Carlos Brathwaite, the man who took his side so close to victory on this very ground just five days ago in a similarly improbable run chase against New Zealand, West Indies had a man at the crease more than capable of dragging his side back into the contest.

It was early in Brathwaite’s innings though and he was yet to get going. He never would. Bumrah struck with the first ball of the over with a beauty that swung one way and seamed the other, just enough to tempt Brathwaite to have a nibble at, just enough to find the edge of his bat, before MS Dhoni was able to stretch just enough to take the catch behind the stumps.

You have to feel a bit for Fabian Allen at this stage. Playing in his first World Cup match, walking to the crease with his team in more than a spot of bother, the partisan India crowd on their feet and making a cacophonous noise to greet him, he could perhaps have been forgiven if the occasion got to him. Especially when you consider what he was having to face from Bumrah, a bowler with his tail up, creating another seminal moment in front of our eyes.

Allen would only last ball – at 143kph it was the quickest delivery of Bumrah’s over and it cannoned into the right-hander’s front pad. The umpire’s finger went up, the crowd noise that had gone from roar to hubbub was reignited once again. Allen reviewed the decision, perhaps realising that him surviving was now West Indies’ best chance of getting over the line, or perhaps genuinely thinking it was going past leg stump. Not so; Bumrah had been able to straighten it just enough – 0.5° to be precise – for the verdict to be umpire’s call.

107-5 had become 107-7 in a flash and India were almost home. Kemar Roach was the next man in, the man to face the hat-trick ball. Roach is a capable batsman, certainly for a number nine. He played his part in the drama of the New Zealand match on Saturday, hanging around for 31 balls and 14 runs, but keeping out Bumrah was going to be a different challenge altogether.

As Bumrah started his idiosyncratic, stuttering run up, the atmosphere was one of expectancy – almost certainty – that he would complete the three-card trick. As the ball left Bumrah’s right hand, and floated out at just 97kph, there was a split second in which everyone watching expected the batsman to be bamboozled and for the zing bails to light up.

Bumrah’s slower ball has been a potent weapon for him ever since he made his international debut in 2016. He has taken 24 wickets with it in all formats, eight of them bowled and, famously, one LBW when Shaun Marsh was trapped in front during the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne last year. The hat-trick ball today was even slower than the Marsh dismissal – 97kph compared to 112kph – but the lines of the two balls were almost identical.

Roach was equal to it on this occasion though. He got his bat down and defended the hat-trick ball – an inch-perfect yorker that Bumrah could hardly have executed better. It was a delivery more than worthy of dismissing a batsman of greater repute than Roach but, on this occasion, he was able to keep it out and Bumrah was denied his hat-trick. He would see out the rest of the over too, defending twice and ducking once as Bumrah finished off his work for the day – six overs, one maiden, two for nine.

A hat-trick would have been the icing on the cake for Bumrah; the obvious, show-stopping moment, on a level that even he is yet to reach in his astonishingly successful career to date. Perhaps we were denied that moment, but this over was no less thrilling as a result. Sometimes, the best moments are the ones that give you just enough, the ones that leave you wanting just a little bit more.

Patrick Noone is an analyst at CricViz.

@patnoonecricket