I have been impressed with Divendra Bishoo. He looks like the real deal. Not many statisticians would say that after he had just bowled 45 overs 1 maiden 1/154, but I'm looking at this as a legspinner rather than as statistician.
There are two things that a leg spin bowler does for a team: 1. They create chances. 2. They tire out the batsmen.
Here's what Bishoo did to those ends.
1. He created at least 13 chances. While there were no dropped catches off his bowling, there were 13 times that I noticed him genuinely beat the batsman. For example he got Dravid to edge one just in front of slip. He got Laxman to play the wrong line and the ball just slipped past the outside edge on two occasions. Dhoni played a leading edge that fell just short of a fielder. Normally about 1 in 3 or 4 chances results in a wicket. He is doing the right things to get wickets. (also remember that the Indian batsmen are probably the best against spin in the world).
2. He was turning the ball sharply at times, varying his flight, speed and particularly spinning it both ways. The result of this is that the batsmen are not able to settle. 3 balls pitching in the same spot would get to the batsman at different times and at different places. While this didn't work well in this test, it will in all likelihood work against lesser players.
For these reasons I am impressed with Divendra Bishoo.
Yes but too often I've seen him switch to a very negative line, forcing the batsmen to play him more defensively like Dhoni did today. If he can keep them attacking with new gameplans, will be much more deadlier.
ReplyDeleteBishoo is a pretty good bowler but its a pity that he is part of the West Indies team with little support from the other end. The Indian batsmen never looked to attack him and tried to milk him away. I'm sure we are going to be hearing a lot about this man in the future.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of WI spinners, do you have any idea what happened to Benn?
ReplyDeleteSorry Chris - I missed that last comment. I thought that Benn was an interesting spinner, particularly good against batsmen who were normally good against spin. He (like many before him) fell out with the WICB - and as a result has not played much recently. Hopefully he can sort it out, because him and Bishoo would be a fascinating combination.
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