Ian Anderson
Discovers.
OPINION: Well, into a spin.
The plan was to write a piece advocating the greater use of spin bowling in Twenty20 internationals for New Zealand.
I’ve long been a fervent proponent of T20 sides stacking their bowling arsenal with spin; ideally three in every XI if I could snatch Gavin Larsen and Mike Hesson’s jobs.
This season’s domestic Super Smash saw spinners to the fore – Anton Devcich, Jeetan Patel, Ish Sodhi, Cole McConchie and Samit Patel easily rated among the 10 most valuable bowlers in a competition where pace and swing bowlers remain way more prevalent in usage.
But I wanted to back up my personal leanings with a raft of data that indicated I was vindicated in my preferences.
Hold the mobile phone. The picture isn’t as clear as expected. Allowing for dealing with a small sample size, it’s tough to argue statistically for the Black Caps to push spin ahead of seam and swing.
It seemed an obvious case however on Friday night when the quicks and the medium-pacers from both sides of the Tasman got carted to and over those famed short boundaries at Eden Park.
I took to Twitter to promote my view, as eight overs of spin went for 78 runs while the other 30.5 overs bowled produced a leviathan 407 runs.
Clearly the hosts were handicapped by the injury to left-arm tweaker Mitchell Santner, one of the more parsimonious T20 twirlers. And NZ skipper Kane Williamson simply blundered by not bowling his offies instead of the under-fire Ben Wheeler.
Maybe the hosts’ brains trust that’s sent me had a phobia about how spinners would be treated in a six-hitters’ paradise. But previous matches at that venue hadn’t established an obvious trend either way.
Prior to Friday night, over the previous decade of T20 internationals at Eden Park, bowling averages and Runs Per Over were notably similar. In 11 matches, spinners from both teams had taken 41 wickets from 120 overs at 23.46 and conceded 8.02 RPO. Other bowlers – pace, swing, militarymedium – had taken 108 wickets from 297 overs at 23.03 and conceded 8.38 RPO.
Given spin is often employed in the middle overs when scoring is slower and fewer wickets fall, you could argue a case that spin is less valuable at Eden Park.
I also had a look at this summer’s T20 internationals featuring New Zealand – eight at home and one in Sydney.
The Black Caps have usually employed Sodhi and Santner in tandem, and 59 overs of spin have returned 18 wickets at 26.44 at 8.07 RPO. Southee, Boult, Rance, de Grandhomme et al have bowled 87.4 overs, taking 37 scalps at 21.20 at 8.98 RPO.
Again, given when different types of bowling are employed, you could form a persuasive debate around spin being second-best.
Maybe world-class players are more adept at scoring off the slower bowlers, employing an array of inventive shots along with the slog-sweep to anything full?
What is apparent is that New Zealand’s opponents should bolster their spin ranks.
This season, opposition spinners had taken 14 wickets from 49 overs at 27.64 with a RPO rate of 7.89, while the rest of the bowlers had taken 36 wickets from 112.1 overs at 30.5 at 9.80 RPO.