da cassino： If you’re Indian, make your own luck on Sunday: be smart and get off strike as quickly as you can
da dobrowin： Osman Samiuddin23-Oct-2021First the good news. You’re an opener. This is a T20. The field is up, the ball is hard, it’s the best time to bat.Now the bad news. The guy about to run in to bowl is Shaheen Shah Afridi*.Your guard is set. You’ve done some visualisation. Adjusted your eyes to the light. Loosened the arms and shoulders. Made sure the blood is pumping in your feet. Most importantly, you’ve fist-bumped your partner.The analyst has spoken to you or maybe he sent you some notes on WhatsApp. If they’re honest and rational and keep emotion out of this, they will have told you there’s a good chance you might not survive this first over. Maybe they put it out there in a cold, hard figure: there’s a one in three chance you won’t survive this over.Related
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Wait, what? One in three? For batters, but even more for openers like yourself, who live against the overwhelming reality that one teensy-weensy delivery out of the millions they face can ruin a life, one in three is not great odds at all. Sure, the calculus is a crude one: the analyst might have told you that since his T20 debut in February 2018, Afridi has taken a wicket in the first over 20 times in 61 innings (and once he took two in the first over, so 21 wickets in first overs altogether). Second place is no place (Imad Wasim with 13, if somebody asks). Crude, yes, but you know it’s not untrue.Now is not the time, but cricket might start noting an equivalent metric for bowlers, of the first 10-balls strike rate of a batter it has started paying heed to.Forget that. If the analyst is good, he would have cushioned this with more positive reinforcement. Such as that you survive two of out three. And that of the times Afridi has struck in the first over, he has ended up on the losing side 12 times. So, even if you fail, you might win which, let’s be real, is good to say but more complicated to feel.Anyway, at least you know what’s coming. To be prepared is half the victory they say. Afridi is tall and left-armed, so there is the angles and the release points to contend with but it’s not an unorthodox action. The wrist is a little wild, with more whip game going on than Indiana Jones but overall, this is not Jasprit Bumrah or Lasith Malinga. Neither is it the side-armed sling of a Wahab Riaz or Mitchell Starc.If you are right-handed, he is most probably going to go very full and bring it back into you. Sometimes it’s absolute banana-swing and if you’re lucky, it’s going to go down leg for wides, or strike you outside leg. Nice sighters when you think about it. Except, he is just tuning his radar. Very quickly, he is going to get one right and then, well, cricket has so evolved we now have smart balls with chips in them recording all kinds of data, but the ol’ swing-backer from the left-armer to the right-hand batter remains, on most days, incomputable.Beating with late movement, Shaheen Shah Afridi style•ESPNcricinfo LtdIf there is any swing, he will get it in this over, no matter if it is Dubai, Lahore or Manchester. If it’s not banana, it’ll be the bendy-straw kind: straight for 90%, then a late, sudden bend. Also, he needs no time to nail the yorker, the immaculate kind that slips underneath the toe-end of a bat wherever it may be. Given that controlling a hard, shiny new ball and its swing is difficult enough, it’s a little special how quickly he gets that right.The bullish voice in your head is telling you that it’s fine, we have de-weaponised the yorker. But you are a batter and so there is a cautionary voice too, telling you that for an incoming yorker from a left-arm bowler, your balance needs to be perfect. And at the start of an innings that can be the most difficult thing to do.Also, sometimes it won’t swing. It’ll just be quick, straight and full. Good luck with that one.Pace is pace, yaar…•ESPNcricinfo LtdOr, you know, it will look straight, wobble a bit and then… no, did that actually go the other way a little?
Is this even legal? @iShaheenAfridi with a soul crushing yorker!#HBLPSL6 | #MatchDikhao | #MSvLQ pic.twitter.com/2gdX6zCACq
— PakistanSuperLeague (@thePSLt20) February 26, 2021