Cricket 2.0

by Tim Wigmore

  KKR were pioneers again; it was easily the highest fee paid for any player who had yet to play a professional match in any format. It represented another stage in the maturation of the auction process, as US-style talent ID was embraced. It showed another side of the IPL, too: its ability to transform cricketers’ lives in a few seconds of bedlam. ‘It is really a dream come true,’ Cariappa told Times of India after he was drafted. ‘My parents have sacrificed a lot for me. With the money I get, I want to buy a house for them.’ This was the human side to the IPL’s maturation from fantasy cricket to systematic team-building.

  Even the shrewdest blackjack players cannot devise a foolproof system – they can simply tilt the odds a little in their favour. Cariappa would only bowl two overs for KKR before, in 2016, moving to a different franchise. He was a gamble that failed; an emblem that no amount of rigorous planning could ever eradicate the essential uncertainty in signing a cricketer. But in 2018, KKR signed Shubman Gill, the vice-captain of India U-19s, on Srikkanth’s recommendation; he promptly enjoyed an outstanding debut season. Together with other successful domestic signings – the seam bowlers Shivam Mavi and Prasidh Krishna, who were also in keeping with Kolkata’s strategy of signing young players who could blossom over their contracts – it reaffirmed that perhaps no team in world cricket identified undervalued players as consistently as KKR. ‘We’ve got it down to a science now,’ Mysore said.

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  For KKR, auction strategy was merely the start of using data. Srikkanth studied their opponents before each game, including compiling a breakdown of each main player, where they scored their runs or took their wickets and how to counter their strengths. He then sat down with Simon Katich – who was appointed assistant coach of KKR in 2015 – to discuss his findings. ‘We challenge each other with our thought processes and with the game plan. Once we are convinced of the game plan then we take it to the captain or bowling coach or whoever is part of the think tank.’

  Team meetings for batsmen and bowlers entailed sifting through footage and looking at a few vital statistics. These emphasised actionable data to drive KKR to employ better strategies on the field, like bowling a specific bowler to a specific opponent, or setting the field in a way that challenged him and ‘put him out of his comfort zone,’ Srikkanth said.

  Data was central to deciding which team KKR picked for each game. ‘We look at match-ups extensively and come up with plans in accordance with the coaching staff and player,’ Srikkanth explained. ‘We have started to pick bowlers against specific batsmen.’

  The moments Srikkanth savoured most are when his insights imprinted themselves on bowlers getting opponents out. When the left-arm wrist spinner Brad Hogg was bowling against Brendon McCullum, a former KKR player, Srikkanth ‘noticed that Brendon likes to pull the spinners in the first six overs if it is a little back of a length,’ he recounted to Cricbuzz. ‘So, Hoggy and I sat down and came up with a plan. We will feed him to pull and we will get him out with the same shot again. So what happened was, Hoggy bowled a slower one, he pulled him for a one-bounce four. Next ball, he left that space open but this time, he bowled a flipper and it skidded through. The idea was to make Brendon do the same thing but the ball skids on from the wicket and gets him lbw. We got him second ball.’

  For analysts, these are the moments to be treasured: when all their work trawling through videos and scrutinising the more than 50 data points Srikkanth collects each ball turns them into puppetmasters planning the game before it happens. Another moment Srikkanth savoured was during the title-winning season of 2012. Against Pune Warriors, Yusuf Pathan, a part-time off-spinner, had the former Australian captain Michael Clarke stumped down the leg side. Srikkanth’s analysis had found that Clarke was prone to trying to drive through the leg side while lifting his back leg in the air, leading him to tell Pathan to deliberately bowl the ball fuller down the leg side.

  Srikkanth considers data analytics more useful for bowlers than batsmen. Studying the numbers can find unexplored nuggets that bowlers can revert to in high-octane situations. Srikkanth studies what opposing batsmen do after failing to score from a couple of balls, and their favoured ‘release shot’ which they go to in this situation; doing so can help bowlers second-guess what to do and even tweak their field placings accordingly.

  Antecedents of this approach were detectable long before T20. In the 1996 World Cup, Bob Woolmer, South Africa’s enterprising coach, used video analysis to find that if England’s batsman Graeme Hick went several balls without scoring he liked to flick the ball in the air through midwicket. After several dot balls, Hick did exactly as Woolmer envisaged and was caught. But modern cricket analytics brought a new precision to this process; in their sophistication, these were more akin to baseball than what previously existed in cricket. Srikkanth identified the optimal ‘comeback ball’ for bowlers to specific opposing batsmen – the shrewdest ball to bowl immediately after being hit for four or six, when bowlers are most vulnerable to haemorrhaging runs.

  Such insights changed how teams conceptualised the sport. Conventional wisdom had it that bowlers would be mere adjuncts to the salient battle in T20s: which team could thump the ball more reliably. Srikkanth recognised that the comparative ease of hitting boundaries, compared to the difficulty in stopping them, made bowlers crucial and often better value than batsmen in auction. ‘Bowlers are equally, if not more important, than batsmen in T20s. Batsmen set up games but bowlers win you games.’ Narine’s brilliance was central to KKR’s title victories in both 2012 and 2014.

  ‘Scoreboard pressure always plays on a team so from a player’s point of view they do tend to value wickets in hand a bit more than they should,’ Srikkanth said. He believes that he has found a better way: encouraging players to value their wickets less highly, especially early in their innings, so that they play more aggressively. His most radical change was moving Narine to be an opening batsman. This move reinvigorated the idea of a ‘pinch-hitter’, a tactic of promoting a bowler or all-rounder up the order with the sole intention of attacking and showing no care for his own wicket.

  At the start of 2017, Narine had only scored 382 runs in 195 T20 games – fewer than two per match – and had never previously batted in the top four. ‘The coaching staff at [Melbourne] Renegades saw me batting in the nets and said, “We could try him opening.” That’s where it started,’ Narine recalled. He was used as an auxiliary opener because of an injury and, initially to target an opposition spinner. In three games opening for the Renegades in 2017, Narine only made 37 runs.

  But he made them very quickly, showing a welcome disregard for his own wicket of the sort that specialist batsmen, reared on batting in longer formats, often struggle to do. Srikkanth was at the ground when Narine first opened for Melbourne Renegades, and noted how adept Narine was at clearing the 30-yard circle during the six-over Powerplay.

  ‘The kind of positivity and courage that he had about his own batting – it surprised me. He was striking the ball cleanly in practice games and in the nets. We said, “Let’s put him up the order and see what he’s got – because if he gets out first ball we’re not losing anything.” The thinking was that he scored so quickly that he could transform a game in 15 balls,’ Srikkanth said. ‘If he gets out first ball he gets out. We don’t put any pressure on him.’

  Narine was deployed like a joker. Playing in such a high-risk way Narine would fail a lot but it didn’t matter – he was picked mostly as a bowler, after all. And, because he attacked so brazenly from his first ball, even a brief innings could make an outsized impact. So it was illogical to keep him at number eight or nine, and risk leaving Narine completely unused.

  In his first game as an opener for KKR, Narine thumped 37 from 18 balls, showing an unabashed disregard for the concept of playing himself in. ‘It’s easier batting in T20 because I’m a naturally aggressive person, so I don’t have to temper anything,’ Narine explained. Srikkanth understood that Narine would fail by conventional metrics, but the
upside of him succeeding was huge. In the 2017 IPL Narine was dismissed every ten balls, abominable by standards in longer forms of cricket, and only averaged 17.23, but had a strike rate of 172.3; only two batsmen who scored more runs managed better. The following season, Narine had a ludicrous strike rate of 189.89, more than anyone else who scored as many as his 357 runs.

  By reconceptualising what it meant to fail in an innings, Srikkanth turned Narine from a bowler to an all-rounder, discovering new and untapped value in his cricket. And by understanding how hazardous Narine’s approach was, Srikkanth ensured that he would be granted an extended run as an opener, even when his style inevitably meant strings of low scores. Narine’s transformation allowed KKR to unlock more batting strength – so they could effectively lengthen their batting line-ups without making compromises elsewhere, and were freer to attack from earlier.

  Adept at using match-ups to exploit their opponents’ weaknesses, Kolkata were also able to conceal their own players’ weaknesses. Narine, who was comparatively weak against pace, was paired with the Australian Chris Lynn, who was brilliant at hitting pace but comparatively ponderous against spin. Opponents liked to bowl spin to Lynn in the early overs, but his partnership with Narine infused this tactic with jeopardy. In their first opening partnership together they broke the world record for the highest Powerplay score of all time, razing 105 in six overs; RCB captain Virat Kohli oscillated between bowling quick bowlers, spinners and back again, spooked by their complementary strengths. The partnership endured: before the start of the 2019 IPL no opening pair in the league’s history to have batted more than ten times together had scored their runs faster than Lynn and Narine’s 10.57 runs per over, indeed no partnership had scored above ten runs per over. Their partnership was difficult to bowl to and complicated to plan for, forcing fielding captains to adjust their tactics and reconfigure their strategies.

  Numbers also informed Srikkanth’s belief that wickets had previously been overvalued, leading teams to bat more defensively and in a suboptimal way. At the time of Narine’s elevation, the average IPL team lost fewer than six wickets an innings – meaning that, in an average innings, their number eight would not get to bat at all. Over a season, KKR believed, they would make more runs with Narine as opener, so great an impact could he make in those innings when he made a useful score. And when he failed, it was almost irrelevant.

  In this way KKR were at the apex of a revolution in the sport. Cricketing orthodoxy has always been that nothing slows down the run rate as effectively as taking wickets. Yet in the major leagues in 2013, the average team batting first in T20 made 154 and lost 6.3 wickets; by 2018, sides batting first made an average of 161 and lost 6.7 wickets. Paradoxically, losing more wickets could even be regarded as a sign of batting teams playing the game more intelligently.

  The revolution that Srikkanth embodied is unfinished. ‘Data has been around for some time now but the acceptance levels have grown rapidly over the past few years,’ Srikkanth said. ‘Players and staff accept that data and the use of data is only to enhance their knowledge and not change something fundamental.’ In the years ahead ‘the use of data would only grow more and more.’

  THREE

  GAYLESTORM

  ‘Chris Gayle is exhibit A in what’s wrong with cricket at the moment’

  Telford Vice, South African journalist

  After walking out to bat with his opening partner, rather than assuming his position at the batting crease, Chris Gayle sauntered towards the middle of the 22-yard pitch and stood there for a few moments, visualising what was to come and practising his trademark pull shot. He was shadow batting in the cricket ground that had become his playground.

  The M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore is small and claustrophobic. The tiny boundaries, coupled with a flat pitch and the high altitude, made it a ground of extraordinary feats of batsmanship. Gayle is an enormous man – 6 feet 3 inches tall and 98kg, so broad and muscular that his upper back is hulked under the weight of his strength. As he stood in the middle of the pitch, adorned in the red of the Royal Challengers Bangalore and with the end of his black bandana trailing out of his gold helmet, his presence filled the stadium. The 40,000 people in the stands had already been whipped up into a fervent expectation of what they were about to witness: one of the most powerful batting orders ever assembled plundering runs.

  Eden Gardens in Kolkata, steeped in history and with a capacity of 90,000, is Indian cricket’s coliseum. The Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, home to India’s great batsmen and demigods Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar, is Indian cricket’s cathedral. Bangalore’s M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, scene of Brendon McCullum’s seminal 158 not out in the inaugural IPL match and home to the batting galacticos of RCB, is Indian cricket’s basement nightclub. Eden Gardens and the Wankhede Stadium have more history but if you wanted a good time you’d come to the Chinnaswamy. A good time is what Gayle was about to give the capacity crowd on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon in April 2013.

  After one more practice shot in the middle of the pitch Gayle turned around and slowly walked towards the batting crease. Like the tennis legend Rafael Nadal, who would arrange his drink bottles meticulously before taking his position at the back of the court, the game was made to wait for Gayle. He even turned slowing down, the antithesis of all that T20 represented, into a dramatic act.

  It took just 8.5 overs for Gayle to reach his hundred. Any delivery from Pune Warriors India’s bowlers with a hint of width was flayed through the off side and any ball even fractionally too straight was picked up and whipped through the leg side. Too full and he clobbered it down the ground; too short and he pulled it into the stands. The shot which took him to his century – a straight drive for six off another erroneous full toss – took chunks out of the stadium roof. Shrapnel rained down on to the outfield below as Gayle removed his helmet and sank to his knees in celebration, arms outstretched, as if to say: are you not entertained? It had taken him 30 balls to score 102 runs, the fastest T20 hundred of all time.

  Naturally, bedlam engulfed the stands. A few fans took to showing their appreciation in a different way. ‘When Gayle bats, fielders become spectators, and spectators become fielders,’ proclaimed the home-made sign that one fan had produced during this remarkable innings.

  Gayle would go on to score 175 not out off 66 balls, breaking McCullum’s record set in 2008 for the highest T20 score. At the end of the 2019 IPL, the record still stood. It was the definitive performance by T20’s greatest batsman.

  But perhaps more than that innings – an exhibition of brutal power hitting unparalleled in the format’s short history – Gayle’s true impact was best encapsulated by something else, something which involved him doing nothing at all: the ball bowled so far out of his reach that it caused the umpire to spread his arms out on either side, to signal a wide ball.

  One of the hallmarks of sporting giants is making their opponents perform worse. Through the lustre of their greatness, and the awareness that they ruthlessly punish any errors, however infinitesimal, the best athletes enfeeble their opponents.

  During Tiger Woods’s elite years, his aura was so great that, even though he directly had no effect whatsoever on what his opponents did on the golf course, he made them play worse. The academic Jennifer Brown analysed round-by-round scores from all PGA tournaments between 2002 and 2006, and uncovered a remarkable finding: competitors performed about a stroke per tournament worse when Tiger Woods was also playing. The simple presence of Woods on the same course led his opponents to underperform.

  In T20, the ultimate unforced error for a bowler is to bowl a wide or no-ball. This is effectively a donation of runs to the batting side, who also have an extra ball to size up the bowler and exploit weakness. Wides or no-balls are like charity runs given to the batting side, adding to their score without taking anything from their two resources – wickets and balls remaining.

  A totem of Gayle’s overweening influence upon T20 is that, when he was batting, h
e received almost twice as many wides as the average batsman: one every 19 balls, rather than one every 35 balls. Bowlers were intimidated by the specimen that awaited them. They knew that any slight erring in line or length was likely to meet the ultimate punishment: a Gayle six. And this knowledge induced them to bowl worse. By the end of 2018 Gayle had garnered 430 runs from opposing bowlers in wides and no-balls, the equivalent of 1.20 runs per match gifted by the opposition bowlers without Gayle having to do anything.

  When it came to T20 batting records, Gayle wasn’t so much on top of everyone else as hang-gliding way above the clouds. At the end of 2018 Gayle had scored 12,095 runs in T20 – 2,467 more than the next most. He had hit 892 sixes – 340 more than the next most. Despite Gayle’s tendency to look to clear the ropes rather than hit the ball along the ground he also held the record for the most fours, 925. A total of 9,052 of his runs had come from fours and sixes. Only McCullum had more runs overall than Gayle had in boundaries alone.

  These records were partly a consequence of the sheer volume of T20 that he had played; with 357 matches, only three players had appeared more often. Yet by relative measures Gayle was also absurdly dominant.

  Gayle’s value lay in his ability to combine a phenomenal scoring rate with exceptional consistency. At the heart of batting exists a trade-off between attack and defence, between intent to score and intent to survive. For most players focusing on one would compromise the other, but Gayle was different.

  Among players to have batted at least 50 times in T20 by the end of 2018 only 19 players averaged more balls faced per innings than Gayle’s 23.40 and not one of them was even close to matching his strike rate of 148.07 runs per 100 balls. Just 24 players had a higher strike rate than Gayle; most were lower order hitters, and only two, the remarkable A.B. de Villiers and the young Indian tyro Rishabh Pant, were even within 20% of Gayle’s average innings length. Gayle spent longer at the crease than almost every other player and while he was there he scored faster than almost every other player.