Two coaches Bharat Arun and Sridharan Sriram explain the left tilt.
Why are India packing their T20 batting line-up with left-handed batsmen? Since the tour of Ireland in mid-August, India’s top seven consists of at least five left-handers. The Indian Express understands that after the last edition of the IPL, the selection committee dwelled extensively on the winning formula adopted by recent winners and also on successful T20 teams worldwide.
Two coaches Bharat Arun and Sridharan Sriram, who have mentored bowling units of India and Australia, point out the reasons for this leftward tilt. Some key personnel including the likes of Shubman Gill, Shreyas Iyer and Hardik Pandya have been missing in the ranks, but there is more to why the likes of Sanju Samson, Rahul Tripathi, Rajat Patidar have been overlooked for Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma, Ishan Kishan, Rinku Singh. In the first two T20Is off the ongoing series against Australia, India have had five left-handers in the top 7, with Axar Patel to follow the aforementioned.
Arun, who also has experience of coaching IPL franchises Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders, highlights the current situation where the right-arm pacers generally tend to try to angle the ball across the left-handed batsmen, but aren’t usually that effective even with change of pace.
Slanting across doesn’t always work
“If you are a left-handed batsman facing a right-arm pacer, you have a better reach. And more over, you are slanting across, which opens up various angles to explore as a batsman. If you look at training sessions, most of them practice to right-handers. So you are not familiar with the angle at all. Most pacers prefer bowling only over the wicket,” Arun tells The Indian Express.
It played out in India’s second T20 game against Australia on November 26th. Sean Abbott tried the slower off cutters that broke away from the left-handed Yashasvi Jaiswal. The first two balls ricocheted off the point boundary advertising hoardings as Jaiswal skilfully waited for the ball to do its thing, held his shape, and cut them through point. When Abbot tried to speed up the next ball, he again couldn’t curve it in and it angled away with the arm, and Jaiswal played a delectable steer through the gully region.
Sriram, who has been assistant coach of Australia during their T20 World Cup triumph in 2021 and also in the IPL with Delhi Capitals, Royal Challengers Bangalore and now Lucknow Super Giants, points out why the right-arm bowlers try that angle.
“You don’t have many right-arm pacers who can bring the ball back in by pitching it full. So you are made to operate in a limited space and if you provide the slightest of width you get punished,” Sriram tells this newspaper. As Abbott would attest.
Without the skill to curve the ball in, even the lbw threat fades out when bowling from over the stumps. If the ball is hitting the stumps, then with this away-angle, more likely than not it would have pitched outside the leg stump. When the bowlers hit the lines of the stumps, then the ball veers further away to outside off as Abbot did.
Difficult to bowl well-outside-off yorkers to left-handers
Often, against the right-handed batsmen the bowlers tend to go well-outside the off stump, almost hitting the tramlines, with their yorkers and really full deliveries. And they have a deep backward point and wide third man as cover for the slices. MS Dhoni would constantly deploy this tactic against Hardik Pandya, who likes to take the off-stump guard, and slice outside-off balls to that region.
But the tactic isn’t always successfully deployed against the left-handed batsmen. Bharat Arun says there is a reason for it.
“One way of cramping left-handers is for you to go around the wicket and bowl those wide yorkers, but there are not many bowlers in the world who are comfortable with that angle,” Arun says. When they try it from over the wicket, it’s difficult to stay within the wide-line and they either end up feeding the left-handers or spray it too wide.
The age-old uncomfortableness against left-handers still persists, says Arun. “Not many bowlers are comfortable bowling to the left-handers. Having left-handed batsmen in the top seven opens up the game a lot because even if you have a couple of right-handers sandwiched between them, bowlers will struggle to execute their plans. They have to keep altering the lines according to who is on strike and the margin of error is way too small,” Arun observes.
Problem that spinners face
It’s not just the pacers but the spinners too have issues against left-handers. At the IPL, the Chennai Super Kings used Shivam Dube to great effect. After his career as a finisher failed to take off at Royal Challengers Bangalore, last season CSK used Dube to nullify the spinners. He would be used as a floater to take down the spinners which meant opponents had to under-bowl them. In the final, it was his successive sixes off Rashid Khan that turned the momentum in favour of CSK.
Sriram lists the issues that spinners face against the lefties.
“If an opposition has a finger spinner, then the left-right combination totally neutralises that threat. So against a left-handed heavy team, some teams will be forced to make changes to a successful combination because of match-ups,” says Sriram.
At the IPL, during their recent title winning campaign, Chennai Super Kings had four left-handers in the top seven, while Gujarat Titans altered between having three/four southpaws in the batting order. Even Mumbai Indians, during their successful campaigns had a mix of left-right combinations flowing through their batting order.
“Of course, it is not as if teams are ignorant of this approach. Some have relied on left-arm seamers and wrist-spinners to thwart such advantages, but so far it has been working considerably well. I feel it is the make-up of the bowling unit that will decide if a left-handed heavy line-up works. If you have an off-spinner bowling in the powerplay, then as a batting team you will look for alternatives. In the IPL, you will have plenty of cover to choose from,” Sriram adds.
Squad-strength and match-ups go awry
But where it gets complicated is, unlike franchise cricket where teams have a big pool of players to choose from, in ICC events and internationals, you get only 15 to pick from. With each spot coming with its own value, not many teams have the luxury of picking an off-spinner, who might be needed only in one game.
Beyond the challenges of having a left-right batsmen combination in the middle, it also neutralises plenty of match-ups. In an era where off-spinners are rare in T20s, most teams prefer having a left-arm spinner or a leg-spinner in the XI as they tend to take the ball away from right-handers. By virtue of having as many left-handers, it disrupts their plans, which in turn could turn to them delaying the arrival of spinners or under bowl them in crunch situations. Even at the death overs, that someone like Rinku Singh has been able to create impact is also down to how challenging it is for fast bowlers to execute the wide, fifth-stump yorker lines, that they usually prefer bowling to right-handed batsmen.
In a period where all the focus has been on the ODI side, India’s T20 side is building their own brand of identity. If an aggressive batting approach is what made India look invincible at the World Cup, in the shortest format, it is the left-handed batsmen that they have turned to resurrect their performances in the T20 World Cup scheduled to be played in the Caribbean and US next June-July.
Source:indianexpress.com