Expect a spin in this IPL tale
All the franchises have loaded up on spinners of every kind with the home pitches likely to dictate team makeup
Kolkata: On any given day, Kolkata Knight Riders are assured of eight overs of spin from Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy. Opening the bowling, one change in the Powerplay, the middle overs or at the death—Narine and Chakravarthy have proven to be KKR’s all-terrain master stroke in the IPL, season after season. Now factor in Moeen Ali, roped in this year, and KKR’s spin attack looks to be as potent as it was when Shakib Al Hasan was with them. The investment in the three spinners alone stands at ₹26 crore, more than a fifth of champions KKR’s salary purse for this season.
KKR aren’t the only franchise invested heavily in spinners. To retain Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav, Delhi Capitals have spent ₹19.75 crore. For Gujarat Titans, retaining Rashid Khan for ₹18 crore was a no-brainer. Punjab Kings breaking the bank to get Yuzvendra Chahal for ₹18 crore during the IPL auction showed how desperate they were for a matchwinner.
But quite spin-heavy has been the approach from Chennai Super Kings, retaining the multitalented Ravindra Jadeja for ₹18 crore but also adding home boy R Ashwin for ₹9.75 crore before buying Noor Ahmed, a 20-year-old wrist spinner from Afghanistan, for a staggering ₹10 crore.
On an average, all the franchises have stocked up on at least six to seven slow bowlers, either specialists or allrounders, with Gujarat Titans topping the list with nine names. Rashid Khan will be their top operator in the middle overs with Washington Sundar expected to provide vital support with his off-breaks. But since Rahul Tewatia and Glenn Phillips also bowl occasionally, don’t rule out a spin-heavy approach from the Titans.
A majority of this spending on spinners is linked to the type of surfaces available during the IPL and the kind of combinations the franchises want to go with. With its slow pitch and vast boundaries, Ahmedabad is tailor-made for spinners to choke the run flow. Pacers did bulk of the work for CSK last year, but considering how the red soil pitches have traditionally assisted spin at Chepauk, going in spin heavy for the home games makes a lot of sense.
Especially with Ashwin at the helm again, expect a plethora of carrom balls and reverse carrom balls, some deliveries with more underspin than others, all bowled off the same length to keep the batters confused. Ashwin-Jadeja may not be an item anymore in Test cricket but by engineering their T20 reunion, CSK have effectively ensured a left-right bowling matchup conundrum for opponent batters.
Peeking through the big buys and retentions is Mitchell Santner, possibly the best bargain buy ever by Mumbai Indians, who got him for the base price of ₹2 crore. Equally cost-effective has been leg spinner Karn Sharma ( ₹50 lakh), allowing MI to splurge on Trent Boult and Deepak Chahar while also picking up Mujeeb Ur Rahman, the talented off-break bowler from Afghanistan who replaced the injured AM Ghazanfar. Expect Santner, a bugbear to Indian batters in recent years, and Karn Sharma to feature heavily in home as well as away games. Only when the surface becomes drier can Mujeeb probably pitch in with his off breaks.
Which is probably most expected at Eden Gardens, a fortress for KKR, solely because of the pitch that becomes slower and lower as IPL progresses. You could say buying Ali has inadvertently increased the options in off-spin at KKR but given Narine and Chakravarthy are not exactly bowlers in the traditional mould, the bowling repertoire balances out just fine. To not invest heavily in leg-break (KKR let go of Suyash Sharma this year even though Mayank Markande is on the roster) could be correlated to the fact that wrist spinners tend to get hit more in smaller venues like the Eden Gardens and M Chinnaswamy Stadium, which is why RCB’s decision to pick Suyash could soon be tested.
That said, the frantic bidding for Chahal during the auction completely justifies the ₹18 crore Punjab Kings agreed to shell out for the leg spinner. Of all the bowlers to have taken 150 wickets or more in IPL, Chahal’s strike rate of 17.17 is better than Jasprit Bumrah and only second to Lasith Malinga’s 16.62 on the all-time list. That too while playing fewer (160) matches than Narine (177), Ashwin (212) and Jadeja (240) among the current spinners. One short of the 150-wicket mark, Rashid is soon going to change that list as he has played even fewer (121) matches. That he is able to impart that degree of spin while bowling in the high 90s (kph) and rarely straying from his lines, it is no wonder Rashid keeps getting retained.
