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IPL 2023: A third act in KKR's 'mystery spinners' play
Early blows from Sunil Narine and Varun Chakaravarthy, late wickets from Suyash Sharma–this was as good as it gets for KKR at Eden
Before setting upon a career trajectory that had pit stops at different clubs till it led to the trials of Kolkata Knight Riders at Mumbai, Suyash Sharma’s tryst with leg spin began on the terrace of his Dilshad Garden home. Cousin Kunal Sharma had played cricket for a while but it was really his uncle Dharmendra who had goaded Suyash into taking the game seriously. “Till then I was playing at the park near the market. But I started bowling for long hours on my terrace, sometimes till midnight,” said Suyash just before the season.
Leg-spinners thrive on bounce. “Delhi mein itna bounce nahi milta that (I didn’t get as much bounce on Delhi pitches), but Kolkata and Mumbai were different,” he said. Bowling on a terrace however means consistent bounce, and that possibly shaped Suyash’s repertoire.
“Suyash is a normal leg-spinner,” said KKR captain Nitish Rana after their 81-run win against RCB on Thursday. “But he has an X-factor. He has a very high arm speed with an orthodox action, so it's very difficult to pick him. He's also very quick through the air. You will be 100% in trouble if there's a little bit of doubt while facing him,” he said.
Suyash wasn’t getting much spin but both deliveries that fetched him the wickets of Anuj Rawat and Dinesh Karthik were fuller, loopier balls. At that juncture of the innings, where RCB had to throw their bats at every ball despite hemorrhaging wickets, all Suyash had to do was bring the field up and tempt the batter. And he did exactly that. It was Rana’s smart captaincy though that allowed Suyash to be his own while ensuring he didn’t have to face the brunt of RCB’s top-order might. And for that he turned towards Sunil Narine and Varun Chakaravarthy.
“I knew Suyash would do well but I wanted to bring in Sunil in the powerplay and then Varun, and both of them gave us breakthroughs. It was very important to take wickets in the middle,” said Rana. This being Eden Gardens where the ball can stop on you, batting becomes comparably easier if bowlers pitch it fuller. This is where Narine and Chakaravarthy excelled from the first ball–denying RCB’s batters that range and time, asking them to come forward and play straight.
The biomechanical corrections aside, Narine still hasn’t forgotten the art of squeezing the life out of any innings. And that was evident in the way Narine made Virat Kohli bat to his field at short third man and square-leg in the first four deliveries. Time wasn’t RCB’s ally. So Kohli tried to seek, rather force open, another gap by playing across the line and fell to an inside edge. Ditto for Faf du Plessis, going for an expansive drive against Chakaravarthy. “Basically a lot of our batsmen were beaten on the inside edge,” said RCB batting coach Sanjay Bangar later. “That's something you don't tend to do against bowlers who don't turn the ball that much.”
Yet KKR’s slow bowling on Thursday was a confluence of skills, anatomical modifications and acquired craft beyond the wildest imagination of RCB, or for that matter any side, that yielded nine wickets and a thumping win. Sure the pitch played a part in this dismantling. And the match would have panned out differently had Shardul Thakur not played that trailblazing innings.
But things fell in place, just like they were dreamt to be. Narine quietly turned back the clock. Equally paramount was Chakaravarthy’s timely comeback after a less than mediocre season last year. Finally came Suyash as the third act of this ‘mystery spinner’ play KKR have been putting up for over a decade now.
