Slower deliveries on sluggish pitch, how LSG pacers forced a win over RR

On an unusual pitch at Jaipur that warranted smart cricket, batters were stifled by pacers’ variation.

A team needed only 74 from 54 balls with 10 wickets in hand and still lost. Never before in this IPL has a lower score been defended. It may be a one-off or just the start of the phase where pitches are expected to get slower and stroke making increasingly difficult.

Lucknow Super Giants' players celebrate after winning against Rajasthan Royals. (Agencies)

But one thing’s for sure - Wednesday's match surely will prompt teams to recalibrate their strategies. To start with, for the first time in IPL we have in Jaipur a venue where there was no dew, the boundaries are considerably longer and the pitch got slower every over.

Clean hitters, fearsome strikers of the ball like Kyle Mayers, Nicholas Pooran, Marcus Stoinis, Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson and Shimron Hetmyer were struggling to connect shots, sometimes going at less than a run per ball.

"It's not one of those innings that I dream of playing," Mayers, who top-scored with 51 off 42, said after Lucknow Super Giants’ 10-run win against Rajasthan Royals. With longer square boundaries (70m) negating slogs, batters were forced to aim straighter.

"The variable bounce was the hardest thing,” added Mayers. “The way their bowlers used the wicket, you thought you had the length to get under, but it was tough, it was sliding. So, I just tried to aim straight. I also tried to give the bowlers my stumps and tried to hit through the off side as much as possible."

This is the kind of pitch and conditions that implore batters to fall back on proper technique, bide their time and play ‘smart cricket’, as Samson, Rajasthan Royals captain, said later. And that meant trying to get more out of the middle overs.

Royals scored 57 from overs 7-15. LSG scored 72 runs in the same phase. Considering that Royals ultimately lost by 10 runs, this phase emerged as a crucial differentiator, something R Ashwin had predicted even before Royals began their chase. "If we were a bit smarter in the middle phase, we might have restricted them to 10 runs lesser,” he told the broadcaster during the innings break.

The Jaipur track played its part in keeping the batters guessing. "It was a tough pitch. I thought Lucknow bowled really smart. We could have probably kept a few boundaries from being hit, especially towards the back end and in the middle with spin," said Kumar Sangakkara, Royals' director of cricket and head coach. "We didn't think the pitch would slow down that much, because yesterday in training the pitch was much better at the back end.”

But a bigger factor was how fast bowlers had started to become more effective with their variations on a pitch where the ball was stopping on batters. Jason Holder showed how it’s done in the first innings, taking pace off the ball, mixing scrambled seam deliveries with his medium pace while varying his lines. Each of the five boundary hits against him came off either length balls or full deliveries.

By the time Lucknow were defending, the pitch had become slower, paving the way for Stoinis–who was Player of the Match for a 16-ball 21 and 2/28–to be more effective with his variations. Starting his spell with a 113.4 kph delivery, Stoinis was also mixing in 135 kph balls. Avesh Khan too resorted to a similar strategy, bowling the odd yorker while cleverly targeting fifth-sixth stump lines to make batters reach out for wild heaves.

Hetmyer, Royals’ designated finisher, was dismissed off one such miscued heave at the backend when Royals needed him to stay. "We used slower balls, length balls and yorkers," said Avesh later. "We thought it would be tougher for batters to hit if they generate their own power. So, we were mixing up our pace right through.”

An assessment tha turned out to be a perfect for Lucknow Super Giants.