If Pakistanis are kept in their hotel rooms during training and games, and are compelled to eat in the exclusive confines of their own dining room, how can they possibly hope to perform at their peak?
When the opposition’s star leg spinner bowls off-breaks for the most of a training session, you can be sure you’re in their thoughts. After speaking with Mickey Arthur, Shadab Khan sent down one offie after another offie at Chepauk on Wednesday. In what way? The South African team has four left-handed hitters. Two of them are Andile Phehlukwayo, who hasn’t played a game in the competition, and Kagiso Rabada, who has batted twice in five matches. David Miller and Quinton de Kock are the other two.
The answer to the previous issue is to figure out a method to make them, especially de Kock, irrelevant in Friday’s World Cup match between the two sides in Chennai. Miller has been at the crease in the 30s while South Africa has secured two of its four triumphs, and he has amassed 138 runs in five innings. His 43 was South Africa‘s highest score in their one and only defeat, against the Netherlands in Dharamsala on October 17, and it was the only thing that saved more humiliation, along with Keshav Maharaj’s 40.
Maybe because he is looking forward to having more freedom after the World Cup when he departs from ODIs, De Kock has performed like a man released. For whatever reason, all three of his centuries have glistened with visceral vitality and pleasure. It will take time to stop him. Not that it hasn’t been done: Reece Topley of England and Colin Ackermann of the Netherlands caught him for twenty-four. That’s a 50/50 case for using off-spin as a successful strategy to neutralize de Kock’s danger.
In the grand scheme of things, the hypothesis is equally invalid because in his 150 ODI innings, seven bowlers have dismissed de Kock at least three times. Ravichandran Ashwin is the only one who is not a spinner. Agha Salman is an off-spinning all-rounder for Pakistan, although they haven’t selected him for any of their five games. Only Iftikhar Ahmed, among other frontline batsmen Babar Azam, Abdullah Shafique, and Iftikhar Ahmed, has experimented with right-arm finger spin at this level of the format.
De Kock has scored three hundreds, and each one has glistened with visceral energy and pleasure.
De Kock has scored three hundreds, and each one has glistened with visceral energy and pleasure.
Shadab’s unexpected shift of style in the nets, however, indicates that the Pakistanis are considering this off-spin theory seriously. Weren’t they? Shadab grinned and responded, “No, no, no; it was just an experiment,” on Thursday. “All I was doing was bowling warm-up balls.” That is all. It is not a severe issue. In cricket, Shadab has the longest warm-up routine if that is indeed the case.
Perhaps you could turn to cricket’s least dangerous bowling technique as your go-to tactic when players are ruthlessly boxed in, particularly when things are not going well on the field. Pakistan defeated Afghanistan, Australia, and the Netherlands but lost to Sri Lanka and India.
These are the same procedures that were implemented during the pandemic’s bubble, which negatively impacted players’ mental health. The distinction is that, in a series or tournament, the limitations apply to all parties, not just one squad. Similarly, not just Pakistani fans were absent from the stands during Covid.
The reality of Pakistanis traveling to India as a whole dictates that they should put up with this: security needs to come first, and as we all know, this nation has at best tense relations with Pakistan and has been the target of deadly terror attacks. However, it is inequitable for Pakistani players to be treated so differently from other players. Additionally, it takes away from the contest’s supposed equality.
It is a fact that Temba Bavuma acknowledged on Thursday: “I think with everything that is happening around their team, and the things that are not going well for them, that humbles us as a team and it really gets to pull ourselves back and make sure that we still focus on playing good cricket.” The South Africans are not subjected to discrimination of this kind.
Bavuma’s team was so at ease ahead of Friday’s match that De Kock and Miller skipped the optional practice on Thursday. Heinrich Klaasen, whose strike rate of 150.78 is the highest in the tournament, wasn’t either. Nor Aiden Markram, who was surpassed by Glenn Maxwell on Wednesday to take the record for the fastest World Cup century, which he had held for eighteen days.
This South African team is unique in that it isn’t centered around a single individual. They also don’t bowl off-spin with their non-off-spinners.