India vs West Indies: No break for unlucky leg spinner Amit Mishra

Even in the best of times, he comes across as a worried man. In the worse of times, he seems petulant. It might also have to do with the context of the match, when India were frustrated by the unexpected rearguard from West Indies batsmen. Also factor in a slow surface that hardly offered him any canvas to ply his trade. Batsman can play him off the surface, and Roston Chase decoded his variations and used his feet brilliantly. You feel if you pick his front-of-the-hand straighter ball, Mishra feels a little unnerved. It is his best disguised delivery and he uses it sparingly, but if the batsman deciphers it, he feels a little less confident.

Ironically, it was the worst he had bowled and the luckiest he was in the entire series. On the fourth day of his first over, he got a wicket with a long-hop pitched out leg-side. Kraigg Brathwaite had a brain-freeze and miscued a pull. Mishra had to wait for 87 more balls to get his next wicket, fortune again playing its role as Shane Dowrich had a big ricochet of his bat before hitting the pads, which went undetected by umpire Ian Gould. So when Mishra looks back at these dismissals, he wouldn’t even feel slightly inspired or emboldened, getting wickets of a short ball and an umpire’s indiscretion.

It was a different story in Antigua, especially in the first innings, for the strip was perfect for him to weave his magic. It was on the faster and bouncier side, enabling him to get substantial fizz off the surface. In the first over itself, he troubled Kraigg Brathwaite with drift, bounce and turn. He reduced nightwatchman Devendra Bishoo to a clueless wreck, and in the end deceived him with his flight. He just got one more wicket, that of No 11 Shannon Gabriel, who was foxed by his doosra. In between he did almost everything to get another wicket—he saw the ball eluding the outside edge of the blade by a mere millimetre, saw outside edges evading the fielder and had faint inside edges coming between his wrong ones and the batsman’s pads. Each time, Mishra would respond with a shake of his head and a sheepish smile, an acknowledgement of lucklessness.

In this second innings, he was reduced to being a bottle-necking bowler with Ravichandran Ashwin was bowing in zen-like zone. Mishra wasn’t entirely on the defensive, but there was a deliberate economy in his flight and variations. The final analyses of 19-3-61-1 doesn’t put him in good light.

Determined to coerce luck, Mishra bowled better in the first innings in Sabina Park, especially in the forenoon session on the first day. It was possibly the best he had bowled in this tour. Here was a leg-spinner in his element—varying his flight, pace and trajectory, smartly slipping in his variations, purchasing ripping turn off the surface and making batsmen stab uncertainly outside the off-stump. As luck (or the lack of it) would have it, his best delivery didn’t yield a wicket. He deluded Samuels with inward drift. Samuels went with the trajectory of the ball and thinking he had gauged the landing perfectly leaned to defend the ball. The ball had other whims. It dipped and veered away, almost kissing his outside edge to settle in Wriddhiman Saha’s gloves.

Then came a moment of desperation. He was convinced he had induced a faint edge off Jermaine Blackwood to Saha, only for the appeal to be with a stone-faced Gould. Mishra appealed, then implored and then begged before returning to his run-up with a disbelieving look on his face. Thereafter he seemed disturbed and unsettled, cussing and admonishing himself, wondering what more he could do to align his lucky stars.

To intensify his dejection, at least subconsciously, Ashwin is getting wickets bagful. The off-spinner has picked 13 wickets at 22.46. Mishra has prised out just 6 wickets at 38.66, and of those, three of them were No 9 and No 11. The best Mishra could do now is not to delve deep into those numbers and not unduly worry about the wretched luck, trickling and taunting him. And wait like he had waited for in India recall.