Saturday, April 25, 2009Who should have bowled the Super Over for KKR?Who should have bowled the Super Over for Kolkata KnightRiders in their last match against Rajasthan Royals? Castrol Index tries to find out whether it was wise to send Ajantha Mendis into the crunch situation or whether there were other bowlers that could have been considered by the KKR think tank. Let us consider first that each team consisting of three batsmen and one bowler playing one Super Over is like playing a whole game of T20 in just one over. So the mindset of all the batsmen metamorphoses into hitting all the 6 balls to the farthest corners of the ground. It is indeed a crunch situation and the player who can keep his cool and hit or bowl the ball in the right places will win. Given all of the above, other than Mendis, the names which could have cropped up in the team’s think-tank were Ishant Sharma, Chris Gayle or even Sourav Ganguly himself. The table below shows the bowlers with the current Index, their economy rate in the first column and their percentage of balls that have been hit for boundaries. (As an illustration, the table below indicates that 14% of Mendis’ balls bowled in IPL 2009 were hit for a four or a six)
Ajantha Mendis scores better in his Bowling Efficiency because he picks up more wickets. He is also economical and he has a different action which can fox the opponent. It would therefore seem that KKR team management did the right job in sending him going by Castrol Index. However, in the Super Over, isn’t it better to use a bowler who concedes lesser percentage of boundaries than takes more wickets? Sourav and Chris Gayle score higher than the regular bowlers in this category, as shown by Castrol Index. Morevover, the fact that Mendis was playing his first match in the tournament may have hightened the pressure of performance on him- especially when facing a batsman of Yusuf Pathan’s calibre. It must be noted here that Yusuf doesn’t yield too many dot balls to the bowlers (62% scoring shots) and hits 31% of the balls to boundaries (table shows Yusuf’s credentials with the bat).
The Extreme Pressure situation might have got to Mendis, even as he haplessly looked on when Yusuf’s catch was dropped in the second ball of the Super Over. (0) Comments
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