Skip to main content

Figuring out Sunil Narine

By
 By all accounts, Sunil Narine is an extraordinary bowler.   There have been mystery spinners in the past – the likes of Chandrasekar and Ajantha Mendis come readily to mind.  But what makes Narine special is that batsmen have not quite figured out how to play him – even with all the expert coaches and video analysis available in today’s game.   We are 30 games into the 2013 IPL and Sunil Narine is at it again – in contention for the purple cap, a hat-trick already, etc etc.

After studying his bowling carefully (I am as big an arm-chair expert as any of you J), I feel there are some ways by which batsmen can play him more effectively.

  •            First, Narine rarely flights the ball.  He bowls flat and fast.  So there is really no point in charging down the track and trying to hit him straight.   Batsmen are much better off playing from the crease.
  •         Because of the appreciable spin that he gets, many times away from the bat – batsmen are very prone to get a leading edge when they try to play the ball in the V.   So a trick seems to be to play him towards mid-wicket and cover –with the spin. 
  •           Batsmen are never sure which way the ball is going to spin and are taking a huge gamble when they have to go after Sunil Narine.  But analysis clearly shows that when the batsmen are trying to go after him, Sunil almost always spins the ball “away” from the batsmen.  He figures that takes away the hoick over mid-wicket  and increases the chances of a stumping.   I think the batsmen would be much better off playing the square cut and the late cut more frequently. 



Look at what Sunil has done now.  Batsmen have been taught to come down the track to the pitch of the ball, play in the V and use the mid-wicket hoick as a release shot.  Sunil has effectively taken away all these options from the batsmen.   And he is forcing batsmen to play him differently than they have played any spinner so far.

It will be interesting to see the tactics that batsmen adopt in playing  Sunil going forward.  But I am also sure Sunil has a lot more mystery left to be unleashed !  Game on………   
Reactions:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chennai beats Mumbai and clinch thriller

By
It is not just about coming back. It is about the impact you make in the process. And Chennai team knows how to with a bang.  The Chennai team beat the home team by one wicket in what was an absolute sit-at-the-end-of-the-chair thriller. It was one of the best chases the tournament has seen and it most definitely won't be the last. The player who made the difference in the end - Jadhav - literally came back from the dead after retiring hurt to take his team to the finish line by hitting the ball in style with a six and a four.  Batting on one leg and playing an absolutely unbelievable shot, this player leveled the scores first with a six and finished the match with a four.  Key Points  MI has never won their opener since 2013. This was Chennai's first win against MI in an opener of this T20 League  DRS used in the league for the first time  Bravo : It was a great team effort. I want to dedicate this win to the CSK fan, they have waited long for
Post a Comment
Read more

Fan Data Analytics: Key to drive sports company growth

By
Over the last several years, the buzz word in business and IT circles has been "big-data" and analytics. Many many articles and write-ups talk about them so I won't go into the details. You could get enough to last a lifetime with just the first few results of a Google search of these terms. But do you really know how it applies, specifically to a sports company? For long, sports franchises have been one of the biggest users of analytics. Before this was a buzz word, coaches and managers have relied up numbers and finding patterns in them to drive on-field performance. Indeed, the major leagues of the world have relied on performance analytics for everything from scouting for talent to calling the action on the field of play. But that never transcended to the off-field, more mundane but equally important task of managing the sports business. As more and more options come up vying for the fan's attention - live events, travel, other sports, TV, the Internet - the
3 comments
Read more

Blog Time: How I won my Fantain Fantasy Cricket

By
I played the Sri Lanka – Zimbabwe match and I won more than six times what I put in. That is a really good investment, isn’t it? I have been asked by Fantain to share what I did and how I planned my lineup. This is how. Kusal Perera  – I made him captain. I won a massive 120 points. My vice-captain was Dinesh Chandimal .  So I got 43.5. In hindsight, I could have picked Perera. He did fabulously well and earned a whopping 89 on the app. The other player in my lineup who helped me win was Sikandar Raza . He got 88.5 on the app. These four players are a must be in the next match between Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.  Dinesh Chandimal is one good consistent player that I always have. So it’s like this. I have four categories when I play fantasy cricket. One is the must-have players who will be on my team no matter what. For this match that I played, they were Kusal Perera, Dinesh Chandimal, and Upul Tharanga. For me, old is gold. Experience speaks volumes. The second category is ba
Post a Comment
Read more