India vs England | Takeaways : Virat Kohli-Adil Rashid hide and seek game, Mark Wood’s failed coaching class

India vs England | Takeaways : Virat Kohli-Adil Rashid hide and seek game, Mark Wood’s failed coaching class

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Adil Rashid, Joe Root, and Eoin Morgan joined hands to bring the curtains down on India's unbeaten run in bilateral ODI series. However, the way Virat Kohli negated Adil Rashid for most parts of his innings and the Indian pacers’ ignorance of Mark Wood’s template were the takeaways from the match.

Virat Kohli's ability to negate Adil Rashid was great...till it lasted

The most viable tactic to hit a six off a spinner is to use the power generated by the bottom hand so as to exploit the lack of pace on the ball. That allows the batsman to target the mid-wicket region. While that is often successful in taming an off-spinner, legspinners are a whole different beast since a right-handed batsman is forced to play against the turn on the stock delivery. But, Virat Kohli is too intelligent a player to be subdued by that. While Adil Rashid has been his nemesis on the tour more than once, Kohli has made a small technical change while playing him - although he got out to the same bowler once again. 

Due to his short stature and a slightly round-arm action that lowers the trajectory of the ball, Rashid made it tougher for Indian batsmen, who failed to use their feet to get to the pitch of the ball. But, Kohli adopted a trigger movement to his batting today to negate Rashid for most parts of his innings. While against others, Kohli stood on the middle stump and his trigger movement took him onto the off, against Rashid, the Indian skipper stood on the leg and adjusted his body accordingly to counter him. The weight transfer meant he was always balanced when trying to get to the pitch of the ball. However, with Rashid bowling more flippers as the match progressed, Kohli was forced to come back inside the stump line to work the ball on both sides of the pitch. This eventually cost him his wicket, as a ripper of a leg-spinner found him stranded and he couldn’t understand the bounce to be dismissed for 71. 

Indian pacers fail to take notice of the Wood template

Today, England pacers, from the very beginning, understood that the bounce off the wicket was not going to help them as the short balls were easily sent to the boundaries. Especially Mark Wood, who is valued for his ability to stick to the short length area, bowled more good length balls which was a viable tactic on the Headingly deck. Wood also remained successful in cramping the Indian batsmen inside the crease and that helped the English spinners be successful. 

 © Cricinfo
 © Cricinfo

However, the Indian bowlers didn’t take notice of the same and bowled short balls continuously which the English batsmen were happy to dispatch for boundaries. Despite getting hit, Hardik Pandya failed to control his line and length, which in turn made the English opening pair comfortable to drive the good length balls through the covers. While the English pacers, with the exception of Ben Stokes, brought the ball back in very sharply to right-handed batsmen and to get the ball to hit the bat hard, Indian bowlers were trying too hard, instead of bowling to the set template set by Wood and Co. Among the English players, Wood bowled from the corner, with the wrist pointing just 30-degree angle at the point of release that made the Indians uncomfortable. An economy rate of 3.00 in ODI cricket against a powerful batting line-up like India is a dream figure for any pacer in the world and Wood just showed that a proper plan can lead a bowler to success.

Is Kuldeep’s X-factor diminishing?

History is a cruel mistress that keeps on showing her face again and again in different eras. Sometimes incidents keep on reminding all of us about the dark past and Kuldeep Yadav’s performances in the last two ODIs has forced me to think along the same lines. Kuldeep is a very rare commodity in world cricket and his angels, drift, and turn are way too hard to pick. To go with that, on surfaces where spinners get very little assistance, he can find control easily. However, there is a chance that he may lose his incisiveness which comes from the mystery factor and I will call history as my witness to prove my case.

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan became one of the most fearsome spinners around after claiming six wickets in each innings of Mumbai Test against England in 1984-85. However, gradually he became less potent as the batsmen learned to pick his leg-spin and after 12 wickets in that first Test, he claimed seven in the second and then just four more in the next three Tests. The likes of Paul Adams and Ajantha Mendis also came up with a mystery factor attached to their bowling, but with time, they faded into oblivion after batsmen found a way to counter them.

A fact to be noted is that Kuldeep has no more than three deliveries in his arsenal - conventional leg-break that turns into the right-handed batsmen, a googly that turns away from them and a straight quicker ball. Given the fact that he lands most deliveries in good length and full length areas, the only concern for batsmen was to pick the type of deliveries from the hand. And once the batsmen do find a way, the onus will be on Kuldeep to come up with new plans. Cause mystery factor will hardly be handy. 

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