All good about Chahal’s mistakes


Chahal's googlies have stood out at IPL 2020

Chahal’s googlies have featured at IPL 2020 © IPL

It’s his first comeback game after six months out and Yuzvendra Chahal is nervous about his bowling pace. He waits for his 14th ball to throw his first ball, Jonny Bairstow hits it and misses. Goalkeeper Joshua Phillipe is equally surprised and doesn’t even get behind the line of that ball and walks away for four byes. Sunrisers Hyderabad is getting away with the game.

When Vijay Shankar enters the fold, Chahal, now in his final finale, decides to try googly one more time. He improves his line this time, taking out Vijay’s drive and throwing it through the door. The party has changed. Use the googly just one more time, against southpaw Abhishek Sharma, but as a defensive option.

RCB faces Kings XI Punjab and two expert spin players, Mayank Agarwal and KL Rahul, have reached 50 on PowerPlay. Chahal offers Agarwal a googly first jump, but it’s a bit short and the batsman steps back to squeeze it and aim for a run. Four balls later, Chahal throws another googly at Mayank, this one off the stump from where he spins his stock ball. Mayank is lured into the unit and the ball sneaks in to disturb his stumps.

He doesn’t throw other googlies in this game, choosing to rely on his sliders and fins to keep Rahul quiet. He would go on to pitch just two more against the Mumbai Indians, bringing his tally to just seven 72-ball googlies based on Cricbuzz’s ball-for-ball records.

Chahal has toughened up playing leg bowling at Chinnaswamy Stadium, where beating batsmen in the air doesn’t matter much anyway because the shots miss the six-candle. With the exception of three upcoming games in Sharjah, playing on grounds with large square limits “is like heaven for us,” he exclaims.

He doesn’t possess a great leg hook nor does he have fast arm action like Rashid Khan that can make evil hard to pick. But his bowling smarts help him continue to dominate hitters, six years after his IPL debut on these shores, amid a revolution in analytics.

Against the heavy hitters, Chahal throws his signature wide ball thrown out of bounds. It’s a strategy he spent days practicing while playing with Chris Gayle on RCB networks. It is also the delivery that has played with the eogs of Glenn Maxwell and Colin de Grandhomme, who have tried to muscle the ball against the effect with bad results.

Even when he’s not throwing it wide, Chahal uses his line judiciously as he tosses to the stumps, using his drift to push the ball past the right-hander’s blind spot off the leg stump and spin the ball to cut through areas of annotation.

For more orthodox hitters like Rahul, who can go inside out over additional cover, Chahal employs the slider and fin, as he did in the game against KXIP, with Centurion Rahul getting just 16 runs out of 13 deliveries of Chahal.

“I think you should understand the situation very well. In one of them, you may want to fly (the ball) or maybe you want to go flatter. You need to know which weapon (to use). Which hitter you want to give away in singles and who you want to attack. For me, I have 3-4 variations, so if you use them well it becomes difficult for the batter to judge, “he says.

Chahal has had a googly in his arsenal, but it is mainly used as a defensive option against lefties to pass the ball through them, in principle the same strategy as explained above. The last 12 months have had the need to take advantage of this ball, as an attacking option against right-handers and to build on their repertoire as the national team works towards the two T20 World Cups.

At Edgbaston in the World Cup, England starters Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow lined up at the shorter limit and Chahal gave up 88 runs. In the semi-final loss in Manchester, Chahal conceded 63 and was the most expensive bowler of the match. As India looked to build their T20 World Cup squad from scratch and batting depth became a factor, Chahal found himself excluded from the T20I side with Washington Sundar, Krunal Pandya and even Rahul Chahar forcing his way during T20I assignments against West. Indies and South Africa. .

During this time, Chahal has had the opportunity to watch his current RCB teammate Adam Zampa ply his trade for Australia in the shorter format. It is from him that the idea of ​​launching a faster bowling alley to the right-hander germinated. He used the three weeks of camp before the IPL honing his skills against two preeminent right-handed white ball hitters, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers.

“I saw Zampa play for the Australian team and I tried to throw faster googlies at this IPL,” he says. “It will give hitters fewer chances to hit six and easier to get them out.

“For the last six months I didn’t bowling in a game and I was a little nervous. I played the first game. Compared to the previous games, there was 20 to 30 percent more nervousness because I don’t know how my rhythm. go. When I did my first over, then it was ok … my rhythm is just there where we stopped six months ago. I was especially worried about my googlies, the variations … whether it will be there or not But I was very happy for the way I threw in the first game and that gave me a lot of confidence.

“When I got Vijay’s [Shankar] shutter [with a googly]I think that was very important because it is always a dream for a leg player to launch that delivery. That gave me more confidence … before that, I pitched 2-3 times on the networks. I spoke with ab [de Villiers] sir and even he told me i couldn’t pick my googlies before so he said ‘please use your googlies but depending on the situation. Batters can’t read you. ‘

Special attention has also been paid to the googly line, making it indiscernible from your stock ball. “Yeah. If you’re turning the leg on the fourth stump, from there, if I throw the googly, sometimes the batter thinks the leg twist is coming. So they have to read it just from my hand, if not. they read, they’re in trouble. ”

At least two right-handers, Mayank and Vijay, can attest to the above. Chahal, the chess player, has made a new opening in this IPL. Now it’s the batters’ move.

© Cricbuzz