Flighting the ball when other spinners may have darted it in, Amit Mishra lost and then won the match for Delhi Daredevils, with a little help from his adhesive fingers
Sidharth Monga30-Apr-2016Four overs to go, 51 runs required. Small ground, flat pitch. Kolkata Knight Riders are five down, but one of those five is a pinch-hitter so they still have two specialists at the crease. Robin Uthappa has broken free from the middle-overs clutches on him, during which he went 18 balls without a boundary and scored 17 off them. All that is in the past now. The comeback after losing Quinton de Kock and Shreyas Iyer in the first over doesn’t matter now. Sam Billings’ impressive debut, Carlos Brathwaite’s return to hitting form and Zaheer Khan’s clever start with the ball are all in the past. Delhi Daredevils also need to forget that fielding no-ball – three men inside the circle – which resulted in 12 extra runs and a change in the momentum.What matters right now is Uthappa has begun to hit, Andre Russell is extremely dangerous, and there are big decisions to be made. Daredevils have gone in with five specialist bowlers; nobody else in the side can bowl, not under this pressure anyway. Chris Morris has two overs left, Zaheer has one, and Amit Mishra has one. There are a few considerations here.Does Zaheer want Morris bowling the 18th, which leaves him no option of a change of end should he go for runs? Does he want to keep Mishra for later? He has been the best spinner in the match, but his last over went for 14, which took his figures to 3-0-21-0. Mis-hits can go for sixes here so he don’t want to keep him till too late, but then again this is the last recognised pair; if Mishra gets the opportunity to bowl to a lesser batsman, he can bowl the match-winning over with his variations. If Zaheer bowls Morris now, it gives him flexibility later but leaves him with the risk of Mishra having to bowl really deep into the chase. If he bowls Mishra now, he is saying, “Right Chris, it’s you and me for the last three overs.” He is also giving up the option of bowling the 18th himself.Zaheer goes with Mishra for the 17th. It is the slightly safer option, the less adventurous route, but only by a little. Mishra to Uthappa so far: 16 off 11 plus one wide. Overall in T20 cricket Mishra has now bowled 64 balls to Uthappa for just 69 runs while getting him out five times. So there is every reason Mishra can come back from the last over in which Uthappa hit him for a six and a four. This, though, is the deepest into the innings when Mishra has bowled to Uthappa. The game hinges on this contest. Mishra trusts his legbreak first ball, flights it generously, but doesn’t get it to dip enough, and Uthappa slog-sweeps it for six. Suddenly all those numbers lose relevance. Suddenly it looks like Uthappa can end this thing if he has managed to rattle Mishra.Mishra isn’t rattled, though. Not even by the sight of Uthappa shaping for a switch hit. He bowls a wide legbreak, but not the big legbreak. It’s just wide enough not to be called a wide. It is a clever ball, out of Uthappa’s reach, but he manages a bottom edge that sneaks between the wicketkeeper’s legs. That’s four more, and it’s 41 off 22 now. Well under two a ball. Mishra finds some relief with a single to deep midwicket next ball.With Knight Riders needing 40 off 21, with Russell on strike, this now is the moment. There isn’t much T20 history between the two, surprisingly. Before this game Mishra has bowled only five balls to Russell, for three runs. Here is Mishra’s opportunity, here is the threat. Russell is a big hitter. He can finish this game. In the previous over, bowled by Mohammed Shami, Russell faced three dots first up, and hit the fourth ball for six. If he gets two hits in, it is over, but with hitters as big as Russell, the opportunity for a legspinner is if they don’t watch the ball closely enough out of the hand.Mishra bowls the wrong ‘un, the flatter, cramping wrong’un. The dot ball earned, now Mishra has brought it back to two a ball. Mishra now tries the loopier, slower wrong ‘un. It is not clear if Russell picks this one because it is too full and Russell would have been going for the big sweep because of the length. That’s one boundary of the two that can finish the game in this over. Mishra has not had a great over. Normally you would say the only way to redeem himself is a wicket, but he owes his team-mates that non-boundary ball now. To still give them a shot.It’s 36 off 19 with five wickets in hand. Thirty-two or 30 required in the last three leaves it heavily in favour of Knight Riders. A single keeps Daredevils in. Mishra, though, is not scared. Not yet. He flights the ball, he is still looking to beat the batsman in the air, this time looking to go past the outside edge. It takes a brave man to do this at such a stage.Russell shimmies down the wicket, reaches the pitch of the ball, and wallops it back down the wicket.The trouble is, Russell has hit this straight at Mishra’s face. At first look this looks like Mishra has just put his hands up in self-defence and taken an accidental blinder, but repeated replays will show you Mishra wouldn’t have been hit had he failed to get his hands in the way. He has got his head under the ball, and raised his hands towards the ball. He is not looking to catch it for sure, but he is not looking to avoid it either. It sticks. The over is redeemed. This leaves one end open, and Daredevils burst through it. Once again they have found a way to win.
