IPL 6: KKR's misfiring mystery men!

18 wickets from 13 matches at an economy rate of 5.59. 7 wickets from 6 matches at an economy rate of 7.04.

Above are the figures of Sunil Narine and Sachithra Senanayake – the two mystery men from Kolkata Knight Riders. Just going by the stats, Sunil Narine has, once again, done well and Senanayake has passed muster in his debut IPL season. However, what these numbers don’t reveal is the impact these two have had in KKR’s campaign this season.

Lying at number 7 with just 5 wins out of 13 games, the Knight Riders have had a forgettable season. Much was expected from the Kolkata franchise but Gautam Gambhir and his men have failed miserably to live up to the tag of defending champions. The batting, as usual, hasn’t clicked; the fielding has been ordinary and Gambhir’s captaincy has been flat and bland. It’s the bowling that won them the title last season, but that has been the most disappointing factor. There has been no fire in the fast bowling unit and the spinners have been anything but penetrative.

Even with the presence of two mystery spinners in the side, KKR has lacked mystery in their spin department. The statement might confuse some but that’s exactly what KKR has suffered from. After the resounding success of Sunil Narine last year, they went all out in the auction for Sachithra Senanayake to add some more “mystery” to their arsenal. They acquired the services of the Sri Lankan but the services haven’t reaped many returns. The mystery bowlers have failed to bamboozle the opposition and have left the team grappling for straws in the tournament. That’s the problem with mystery – someone sorts it out and when your most potent ingredient gets sorted out, you try harder to make it work and in the process, end up mystifying your own self.

Both Narine and Senanayake have been victims of the above phenomenon. The opposition batsmen have played them out without taking risks and hence the drought in the wickets column. The carrom balls, the mystery deliveries and the doosras add an x-factor to the bowlers and the ultra slow–motion images of the bowler tweaking their fingers and rolling their wrists provide for some great television. But if they don’t result in wickets, these experiments remains only as good as a PhD thesis in a lab.

Spin bowling is similar to magic. The trick lies in keeping things simple. The art of spin bowling is more about deceiving the batsman rather than the ball doing things. This principle holds true even more for off spinners. Leg spin has more varieties whereas the offies have to work more with deception. They have to work with flight, trajectory, point of release, variation of pace and the depth of the crease.

Nowadays, it has become a fashion to fire in the ball rather than letting it hang in the air. Yes, flight lets the batsmen step out and get under the ball, but it also increases the chances of foxing him. That’s the beauty of flight. It is all about deception. There is not much mystery in simply lobbing the ball up in the air but there is nothing more deceptive than tossing the same ball above the batsmen’s eye line at a much slower pace and with a higher trajectory.

According to Pragyan Ojha,

“I keep things simple and vary the pace and spin the ball. Normally in this format, I have seen the bowlers bowl really fast, so they cut down on turning the ball.”

For a spinner, the primary duty is to confuse the batsman. It happens in two parts: first confuse the batsman with the trajectory i.e., when the ball will pitch and then confuse him by turning it. It might turn small, it might turn a square mile or it might not turn at all.

And that’s where the KKR spinners have failed to deliver. If Narine has tried too hard with his variations, Senanayake has continuously fired it in to stem the flow of runs and the results are there to be seen. Neither have they run through the sides nor have they been able to restrict the run flow. Their mystery has been their biggest undoing and it has made them more predictable. Both Narine and Senanayake have their own set of problems. Sunil Narine hardly uses the depth of the crease while Senanayake sticks to his round the wicket line. They fail to create angles and deceive the batsmen with flight.

Apart from a predictable line, Narine rarely gives the ball air and hardly bowls an off-break. He tossed it up once this IPL and was rewarded with the wicket of Sachin Tendulkar. His front-on action also doesn’t help much. He doesn’t get a good pivot and there’s not much work put in by the non bowling arm. Since he doesn’t vary his pace much, the batsmen pick him off the wicket and as long as they don’t look for extravagance, there’s not much chance of them losing their wickets.

Senanayake, on the other hand, is in the mould of Kumara Dharmasena. Not only his bowling action; his role in the side is also similar to that of the former mate of the great Muralitharan. He bowls a stump to stump line and tries to do a holding job. He doesn’t turn his off-break much, neither does he do much with his variations. His success has mainly been in the Big Bash league in Australia where the batsmen generally defend against a spinner and play as if they were from an alien land. To succeed against the likes of the Dhonis, the Rainas and the Sharmas, he first needs to get his basic off-break right and then mix it up with his variations.

The idea that a spinner has a set of 4-5 discrete and different deliveries is more of a theory than an unshakeable truth. On the field, variations only work if they are hid behind a veil of guile. The top spinners and the doosras work successfully when combined with perfect off-breaks, changes in line, flight, angle and pace. There is no secret in mystery spinners because there isn’t much mystery in it. The wrist and the finger movements are easily detected by technology and batsmen, now, are more knowledgeable than ever. The trick lies in simplicity and that’s what gives a spinner an infinite range of subtle variations. Kolkata Knight Riders had an idea to produce a blockbuster partnership. The plot was that of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller but sadly the execution turned into a desi Abbas–Mustan dampener.