New Delhi: The lack of a reliable fifth bowling option in the injury-forced absence of Hardik Pandya seems to be the only major concern for India as they look to deliver another knockout punch and seal the series against Afghanistan in the second T20I here on Tuesday.
World Cup winners India returned to the shortest format with a dominant show, beating Afghanistan by seven wickets in a one-sided contest on Sunday here.
Shreyas Iyer’s men ticked all the boxes as pacer Arshdeep Singh and opening batter Abhishek Sharma produced sensational performances to set up the win.
“Everyone worked in synergy,” captain Shreyas Iyer said on the broadcast after India’s seven-wicket win. “Bumrah giving that start, creating the momentum for all the bowlers coming in… Arshdeep [Singh] also bowled brilliantly, followed by Axar [Patel] and Varun [Chakravarthy] – it was a phenomenal effort.”
These four bowlers’ discipline was rewarded with 57 dots in 96 deliveries.
Bumrah was returning to the T20I set-up after six months and after undergoing rehab for a left-knee injury. His second legal delivery was a back-of-a-length ball that reared up against the will of gravity. Opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz fended at the ball and gloved it to first slip.
Bumrah generated extra bounce off the surface and finished with 1 for 26. He stuck to his preferred T20 mantra during this spell: hone in on the shorter side of a length and cramp the right-hand batters for room with the exaggerated inward angle. He strayed down the leg side for three wides in the first over, but the thinking was clear. He wanted to get rid of Afghanistan’s six-hitting options the way he best could. According to Cricinfo’s ball-by-ball logs, 13 of Bumrah’s 24 deliveries were back of a length.
You hit sixes, you win T20 cricket. But you stop being hit for sixes, and you win even more dominantly. And while Arshdeep took the new ball from the other end with the same goal in mind, he pursued the goal via different means. He finished with 3 for 19, and all his wickets came off full deliveries.
Arshdeep is a taller bowler than Bumrah with a higher point of release. He cramps batters his own way: by bowling full and using his point of release to create a sharp downward trajectory to prevent batters from getting under his deliveries. He took out Sediqullah Atal with one such ball in the fifth over, caught at short third man, and then bowled a yorker in the 17th to take out Mohammad Nabi’s stumps. Rashid Khan fell two overs later, miscuing a big hit off another full ball.
The spinners did their bit to stop the sixes too. And though they operate very differently – Axar has a smaller repertoire and fewer tricks than Varun – they operate on similar foundational principles: rigorous lengths that is just short of the traditional spinner’s good length, and a relentless attack of the stumps to stop batters from freeing their arms. Varun’s wicket of Darwish Rasooli, leg stump knocked back by a skiddy slider with the batter’s feet going nowhere, was a perfect illustration of this broad template. Varun landed 15 of his 24 deliveries on a good length, and Axar 13 out of 24.
But despite the lead quartet’s performance, Afghanistan snuck back into the contest, rallying from 43 for 5 to an eventual 156 for 8. This was largely because of a lack of execution from India’s two all-rounders. Iyer stopped short of naming Reddy and Dube in his post-match interview until he was asked about handing the ball to Dube for the first time in the 20th over of the innings. All the frontline bowlers had finished their overs by then.
“Honestly speaking, there was no choice,” Iyer said. “It’s a bit unfair for Dube as well, coming in for the 20th over. Not able to gauge the pace of the wicket, how the ball is going to go on… I felt that he would deliver at that particular moment. But it’s absolutely fine [to have gone for runs], because it’s a game of cricket. And I’m sure that he’ll go and analyse what areas he needs to work on.”
The over went for 21 runs, with Azmatullah Omarzai and Mujeeb Ur Rahman hitting him for two sixes and two fours between them. Dube tried to bowl wide lines with the off-side boundary protected, but he kept missing his lengths. Earlier, Reddy had conceded 30 in two wicketless overs, and while he was unfortunate to concede two edged fours, he also missed his lines and lengths on more than one occasion.
Iyer felt the allrounders had difficult tasks, of bowling to set batters with the older ball. That, though, is precisely the role they will have to play in this team. It has been a long-standing issue for India to manage the fifth bowler’s quota when Hardik Pandya hasn’t been available, and Sunday night was just another example of it.
It is likely India will stick with this combination through the rest of this series, unless the surface prompts them to leave out one of the seam-bowling all-rounders and bring in Washington Sundar. Until Hardik returns, this will be an issue India will have to manage, unless their other allrounders take a big step up in the art of chhakke chhudana.
