How Mitchell Santner outbowled Indian spinners in Pune

This article was published first on cricket.com. Here is the link to the original article - link.

Also, it’s a long post. Please open in browser if you’re not able to see the whole post. Please subscribe through the button below for more cricket stories like this.

---

Mitchell Santner had a dream run in the 2nd test match. He took 13 wickets and won the match for New Zealand single-handedly. Single-handedly because compared to the other two NZ spinners, he was miles ahead. Not just in terms of wickets but also in terms of not-in-control or false shots (edges and misses induced). Consider this - 

The bars are the percentage of not-in-control shots induced by the spinners across all the innings. Santner also bowled more than twice the overs than each of the NZ bowlers. It was as if he was never taken off from his end. It seemed like one long spell from him. Ajaz and Phillips were nowhere close to how Santner was going about his business. In fact, they were the worst two spinners in this match.

There is also the point that Santner got rewarded much more than the Indian spinners, especially Jadeja, who induced almost a similar number of not-in-control shots. 

The number of not-in-control shots each bowler had to induce for a wicket was as follows - 

Ashwin and Jadeja had to work harder than anyone else to get their wickets. Santner got rewarded with a wicket on every 5th not-in-control shot he induced. Does this say that the Indian bowlers bowled well but were unlucky? Or the Indian batters were unlucky to have not survived more false shots? There is no way to tell for certain. We might make some sense of it by checking if in this match some false shots were more lethal than the others. Are all false shots equal or some false shots more equal than others? 

To investigate this, let’s look at how they bowled. Let’s compare Jadeja and Santner, as both of them lie on either side of the extremes in terms of rewards from false shots. I have considered Jadeja bowling in NZ 2nd innings (he took 3 wickets), and Santner bowling in India’s 1st innings (he got 7 wickets). 

First things first, the false shots induced in the innings mentioned above are as follows - 

Santner bowled 50 deliveries against left-handers and induced 8 false shots that resulted in 1 wicket. Jadeja bowled 42 deliveries and induced 12 false shots that resulted in 2 wickets. Even-stevens, one can say. It is the right hand batters against whom Santner (6 wkts) got rewarded way more than Jadeja (1 wkt) despite inducing the same number of false shots - 20. 

Did he bowl any differently from Jadeja? Of course. They are different types of bowlers. The more important question is - did this difference lead to the difference in wickets? 

Let’s get the similarities out of the way first. Both the bowlers bowled almost similar lengths as is evident in the distribution below - 

Now to the line. Broadly, there wasn’t much difference in the line as well. Rhb_leg means that the ball pitched on the leg side of the right hand batter. Rhb_off means that it is pitched on the off side. Leg and off sides are measured from the middle stump. 

Neither of them went too far to the leg side in search of balls of the century. Not too often in any case. 

Let’s move on to the differences. The most obvious difference was the speeds at which they bowled. Santner bowled much slower than Jadeja. This immediately begs the question - should Jadeja have slowed down? If we look at the chart below, Jadeja drew the most number of false shots at higher speeds. Logically, there was no reason for him to slow down - 

In 85-90 kmph range, his false shot rate was high as was Santer’s at 75-80 kmph. So, why did they not bowl slower, especially Jadeja? Because that’s not their speed. In general, Jadeja operates at a higher speed than Santner. For both of them, the slower balls are variations. The commentators on air kept harping on about bringing the speed down, insinuating that Jadeja would get some extra turn if he slowed down. Jadeja already was getting more turn than the other two slow left arm spinners despite bowling at higher speed. 

It is precisely this ability to turn the ball at high speed that makes Jadeja unique. It is much harder than it sounds. Look at the turn he got at different speeds in this match compared to the other two SLA’s. 

Clearly, he bowled faster and turned the ball a lot more than the other two SLA’s. Then how come he didn’t get as many wickets? Did this extra turn become Jadeja’s undoing? It is this ability that works in his favour in most of the matches. Then why not in this match? To be fair, he generated an equal number of false shots as Santner (20) against the right-handed batters. Let’s look at where and how he generated these false shots from. 

First, let’s analyze the balls pitching on the leg-stump line. 

Pitching on leg-stump line - 

Santner pitched 10 balls on the leg stump line and drew 5 false shots. A rate of 50%. Jadeja pitched 12 balls on the leg stump line and drew 2 false shots. A rate of 17%. The false shots (batter edging or missing the ball) are more likely to convert into a wicket when the outer edge of the bat is beaten for balls pitching on the leg side. To achieve this, the bowler has to turn it more. The graph below shows the degrees of turn on normal balls vs not-in-control balls for Mitchel Santner. 

The NIC (not in control) deliveries turned more than the normal deliveries. Which means that Santner generated false shots by turning the ball more. The right way to do it when the ball is pitched on the leg side. 

Let’s see how Jadeja generated not-in-control shots from deliveries pitched on the leg-side - 

In the 85-90 kmph range, there was more turn on the not-on-control delivery. But the other false shot was generated by beating the inner edge. This was probably an arm-ball that beat the inside edge. This is useless as the ball goes on to hit the pad at the leg stump line and the ball is highly likely to be missing the stumps. 

But this is the story of just 15 balls. Most of the deliveries by these bowlers were pitched on the off stump. Let’s see how that went. 

Pitching on off-stump line - 

The SLA bowlers stay on the off side in hope of beating both the edges of the bat. If the ball turns away from right-handers sharply, it beats the outer edge and creates a chance for clean-bowled or caught-behind. If the ball stays straight (arm ball), it beats the inner edge and induces a chance of leg before (or clean bowled if the gap between bat and pad is wide). Now let’s see how Santner beat the bat on the off stump line - 

The balls that the batters missed or edged, mostly turned less than the balls that were in control of the batters (normal). It means that the batters missed the line while playing for the turn where there was none to be found. He bowled 8 balls in the speed range of <80 kmph, that generated 4 false shots that resulted in 3 wickets. He bowled 33 balls in the 85-90 kmph range, generating 8 false shots that resulted in 2 wickets. These are very high conversion rates from false shots to wickets. 

There is also the speed range of 80-85 kmph in which the not-in-control balls turned more. There were 8 such balls out of which 3 were false shots that resulted in 0 wickets. Very poor conversion rates from false shots to wickets. The ball turning away from the right-handers from the off stump line was the most unproductive delivery for Santner. This is exactly how Jadeja bowled across all the speed ranges. 

As is obvious from the graph, Jadeja generated edges and misses by turning the ball more. This threatened only the outer edge of the right hand batter. Most of the NZ batters played inside the line for the straighter ball and risked getting the outer edge, most of which would not carry to the slips. But Santner threatened both the edges of the bat by also turning the ball less than expected. The occasional arm-ball as the commentators say. Jadeja either did not attempt enough arm-balls or when he did, they didn’t come off. Jadeja might have been seduced into turning the ball more given that he generated all the false shots with extra turn. 

Now, why is it that Santner was able to bowl these arm balls? I am guessing it has something to do with the release point. Santner’s release point is, on an average, 23 cm wider than that of Jadeja’s. The ball is naturally coming into the batter. It would probably be blasphemy to suggest this but Axar Patel is precisely the bowler who could have done wonders on this pitch, given how Santner has performed. Axar has a similar method to that of Santner’s. But did the team management know that the pitch would play out like this? 

All of this does not suggest that Jadeja bowled poorly. In fact, he executed the more difficult of skills with the same control of length and line. It’s just that Santner happened to make the most of the conditions precisely because of the bowler he is. He might also have been aided by the Indian batters. It’s not everyday you get Kohli out on a full-toss. It was Santner’s match throughout and he would thank his stars that it happened to be the one that created history.