India vs New Zealand | Takeaways: Mohammed Shami’s lesson in seam movement and Chahal’s slow way to glory

Mohammed Shami for World Cup?

India’s star in their 2015 World Cup was Mohammed Shami, who gelled well with Mohit Sharma and Umesh Yadav to do most of the damage for the opposition. His seam position was upright, which had made him a vital cog in MS Dhoni’s set-up. But Jasprit Bumrah’s emergence within a year since the World Cup and his own injury concerns pushed Shami down in the pecking order. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Bumrah making a lethal pair didn’t help his cause either.

However, in Bumrah’s absence, Shami has done a good enough job to warrant a place in the side for the upcoming World Cup. Today, he kept threatening the stumps consistently, and in the process, he caused a lot of problems for the Kiwi opening duo of Martin Guptill and Colin Munro who were trying the on-the-up techniques to counter the bounce. The second over of the innings can be taken as the example of Shami’s sustained brilliance. The seam kept upright and the ball landed behind the half-volley, but that still brought the batsman forward. He didn’t let the batsman settle down with the variation of swing and seam movement. When it moved in the air, it went away and when it seamed, it nipped back in. 

More than anything, his control of the ball was the most impressive. On a surface, which was more on the slower side, he showed an immaculate amount of patience to bring that odd mistake to the fore. The wind was clearly favouring him from Embankment end, but that doesn’t shout out his accurate seam movement from the other end. This is a trait India would love to have in the future and lest any of the pacers face any type of injury, he can directly slot into the team and can do a good enough job as well. 

Slowing the game down - the Chahal way 

With Mohammed Shami striking up top, New Zealand needed to settle down for a bit and not lose wickets in a heap. And with the kind of form Ross Taylor  - with his past six scores in ODIs being 137, 90, 54, 86*, 80, 181* - was in coming into the game, it was going to take a herculean effort for the Indian bowlers to dismiss him. However, as it turned out, Yuzvendra Chahal found an MS Dhoni-esque solution for him - he slowed the game down.

With Chahal finding enough turn to strangulate the Kiwi talisman, Taylor couldn’t open his arms and waited for the bad balls which were very rare, to say the least. The leg-spinner further slowed the ball down by beating his outside edge regularly. When a frustrated Taylor left his crease almost as a pre-meditated one to break the shackle, Chahal slowed it down further as the ball held up its line and straightened just enough to draw an easy return catch. Tom Latham, arguably a better batsman against spinners, fell to the same trick too as while playing a touch too early to a Chahal googly which gave the bowler his second return catch of the evening.

Slowing the game by making the ball slower is never an easy option in the modern-day cricket. It requires a tremendous amount of confidence in one’s ability and immense power of intuition needs to be developed with it. To achieve that, Chahal never really bothers to experiment on his length, but the execution as Taylor and Latham would attest was near perfect. 

Why would make pitches like that?

Let’s get one thing straight first. This is not the first time that a match was stopped because of the sun. Two years ago, there was a T20I match between Bangladesh and New Zealand which was interrupted due to similar sun outrage. Last week, a Super Smash match between Central Districts and Canterbury was also stopped for a while due to the same issue. Everyone was well aware of the issue ahead of the game.

Now coming to the secondary facts, why did this happen? Unlike other grounds in the world, which was aligned in North-South direction, McLean Park has been laid out in the East-West direction. So when the sun sets, the rays directly hit the players and it becomes almost impossible for the striker and the wicket-keeper to keep an eye on the ball. 

However, the question arises not only on this one issue but the facility provided by McLean Park as a whole. The stadium was deemed ineligible to host matches two years ago due to poor drainage facility and after Central Districts took a two-year time-out to prepare the turf further, they have got the permission to host this game. Didn’t the malfunction in the pitch preparation strike their mind when it happened for the first time? Surely, an international cricket match can’t be stopped because of this reason.