Match-up: IPL’s new buzzword
Teams now relying on player-specific data to decide on the batting order or bring in a bowling change
If you have watched the IPL this season, or any T20 match in the last few years, one phrase will have been inescapable. “Bowling to matchups”, “taking on the match-ups”, and “lacking match-up options” will be among many sentences peppered throughout the commentary that lean on that phrase, one which seems to have arrived in T20 discourse through the back door.
As Tom Moody put it recently on ‘The Pitch Side Experts’ podcast, “you don’t really see a half hour of play without a commentator mentioning a match-up”.
It’s a phrase without an exact meaning. Commentators will variously use it to refer to: a high profile duel, a notable head-tohead record, a spinner turning the ball away from the batsman.
Similar to how in soccer “gegen-pressing” just means pressing.
Idea isn’t new
“Match-ups” may be a new term, but it’s not a new idea. Captains have always wanted to target the weaknesses of certain batsmen with bowlers suited to doing so, all the way back to Douglas Jardine targeting Don Bradman with Harold Larwood’s short ball, in the ‘Bodyline’ series of 1932/33.
Data analysis may have shifted the process from being led by hunches, to being led by numbers, but the basic premise is still the same.
A match-up, then, is a battle between a batsman and a bowler that is weighted, historically and statistically, in favour of either player. In its most simple form, it can be simply be about a batsman’s preference for pace or spin. In the past, KKR paired Sunil Narine (much prefers spin) and Chris Lynn (much prefers pace) to great effect at the top of the order making match-up bowling much harder.
Target Lynn’s weakness against spin and a swift single leaves you open to the strengths of Narine and vice versa. That pairing has been broken up this season, with Lynn replaced by Shubman Gill, a very different player; the young Indian is, like Narine, strong against spin and struggles at the moment against pace. With no disincentive for the opposition to bowl high pace, Narine has been bombed with the matchup he hates most, and has been dropped. Another level of this tier of match-ups is the individual head-to-head. Specific batsmen dominating specific bowlers— and vice versa—might be the bluntest form of match-up strategy, but it can still be extremely effective.
Karthik’s trick
In the game between Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad, we saw a perfect encapsulation of “bowling to matchups”. KKR captain Dinesh Karthik held back his star bowler Narine, specifically to be used against MS Dhoni when the CSK captain arrived. Before the match, Narine had bowled 76 deliveries to Dhoni, dismissing him twice and going at just 3 rpo.
CSK had pushed Dhoni up the order potentially to confront the match-up, to force KKR to use Narine before the death. In came Dhoni, in came Narine. Four balls, one run, Dhoni was bowled at the other end attacking to relieve pressure.
KKR had won the battle. However, as shown by the secondguessing in the Dhoni/Narine, teams are almost too wise to traditional match-ups now.
To the next level
Advanced match-ups are the next big step in analytics, because they have a far more predictive element.
A batsman may have a weakness against High Release Seamers, with the height being the distinguishing feature rather than whether they are left-orright handed. The granular data allows analysts to distinguish between say, a Billy Stanlake, and a Dwayne Bravo - both right handed seamers, but about as different from each other as can be. Or it could be that, like Aaron Finch, a batsman has a reasonable record against leg breaks, but a terrible one against googlies. As such, targeting Finch with a leg-spinner who can’t bowl googlies is not bowling to the match-up. Equally, distinguishing between different kinds of spinners can be key. Slow, looping old-fashioned spinners like Kuldeep Yadav and Amit Mishra can cause certain batsmen far more problems than quicker, darting leggies like Rashid Khan and Adam Zampa.
The underlying attention paid to match-ups, and the extent to which they dominate the thinking of T20 coaches and analysts, has already changed the game. Kings XI analyst Shankar Rajgopal recently summed up how match-up thinking has influenced the cricketers we actually see make it out into the middle, when he tweeted: “Natural evolution in T20 cricket: Finger spinners -> Wrist Spinners (bowlers who spin it both ways) -> Left Handers (mostly middle order to counter wrist spin) -> Off Spinners (to counter the left handers). And the cycle and evolution continues.”