Inscrutable West Indian

The turn that cramped Tendulkar for room,and the zip off the wicket that gave him no time to adjust,were entirely unexpected. Tendulkar was barely able to bring his bat down,and as square cut morphed into a feeble attempt at a dab into the off side,the ball cannoned off his pads and knocked back off stump.

When the ball had hovered in the air,its scrambled seam had given the batsman little clue of its coiled intentions — which way it would deviate and by what degree. The line was a giveaway,of course,but it’s hard to say whether or not Tendulkar picked the delivery from Narine’s hand.

When Tendulkar was dismissed,Mumbai Indians were 60 for two after 11 overs,chasing 141. When Narine came back into the attack,only Rohit Sharma remained between Kolkata Knight Riders and a comfortable win.

When he got on strike,Narine sent down a ball pitched just outside off stump,dropping just short of driving length. Rohit,playing for the off break,shaped to work the ball into the leg side. The ball straightened instead and looped off his leading edge before dropping into the right glove of Brendon McCullum,who had dived forward to pouch the catch where silly point might have stood in a Test match. In real time,on television,from behind the bowler’s arm,it was hard to tell which way the ball would go. Slo-mo revealed that Narine’s first two fingers had flicked the ball out of the front of his hand. The seam,yet again,was scrambled.

Ramadhin precedent

Last year,Independent columnist Amol Rajan published Twirlymen,an ambitious and always engaging history of spin bowling,in which he described its evolution all the way from the underarm merchants of the 1770s to the IPL era,and examined the methods of its foremost practitioners. Stopping to savour the 1950s,he described the method of Sonny Ramadhin,who like Narine was a Trinidadian man of mystery: “Ramadhin was,as Richie Benaud put it,‘basically an off spinner with a deceptive leg break.’ He bowled both of these out of the front rather than the side of his hand,so that his fingers (first and middle for the off break; middle and third for the leg break),did most of the work . Ramadhin seems to have minimised the involvement of wrist altogether.”

It was this that made Ramadhin as deceptive as he was. Variations that bring the wrist into play are usually easier to read out of the hand — the googly and doosra,for example,present the batsman the back of the bowler’s hand,unlike the classical leg break or off break,which are released out of the side of the hand.

Narine,like his spiritual predecessor Ramadhin,relies almost entirely on his fingers to do his magic. And his unusual grip,with the ball held between middle and third finger,adds to his deceit. “I haven’t seen anyone else with that kind of grip,” says former India leg spinner and Central Zone selector Narendra Hirwani. “But if someone can bowl like that,he should be able to bowl a leg break or an off break just by varying the way his fingers put pressure on the ball.”

As observed during the Rohit Sharma dismissal,Narine’s leg break,or knuckle ball,involves a flicking motion of index and middle finger — a variation on Ajantha Mendis’s carrom ball,where the middle finger does all the work. From the batsman’s point of view,there is little to distinguish it from his unusually gripped off break.

Both balls,moreover,come out of his hand with the seam wobbling about in unrestrained manner,making him almost impossible to read in the air. It’s fair to say that video analysts all around the world are breaking their heads,as we speak,to decipher Narine’s tricks.

Of softball lineage

Narine discovered his unique grip and variations while playing softball cricket in his hometown Arima.

“He is a product of the highly competitive softball cricket culture in Trinidad,” says Omar Khan,manager of the Trinidad and Tobago cricket team. “He always used to do all sorts of things with the ball. And he started doing the same things with the hard ball. He is naturally gifted and he makes the most of it.”

But these natural gifts didn’t hasten his rise in any way. “Sunil has been around the Trinidad & Tobago team for a while now,at least the last five years,” says T&T skipper Darren Ganga. “But he took a while to break into the first eleven and cement his place there. He was even part of our Champions League squad back in 2009,when we finished runners up. But he didn’t get a game,and was just a net bowler for us then.”

Narine played only two matches in his first two first class seasons,sending down 144 deliveries and taking just the one wicket. His breakthrough only arrived at the 2011 Champions League T20,in which he took 10 wickets in six matches at 10.50,while giving away just 4.37 runs an over.

This led to a call up to the West Indies ODI side,and a more regular place in the T&T side during the 2011-12 Regional Four Day Competition. His impact was astounding – 31 wickets in three matches at the utterly ridiculous average of 9.61,with five five-wicket hauls.

His Champions League displays,as expected,didn’t go unnoticed in India. Ganga,who had met and befriended Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore during the tournament,recommended Narine to him.

“Sunil had already shown what he was all about,but Venky still wanted my view on him since I had captained him many times,” says Ganga. “I told him then that Sunil was a bowler who could win you a T20 match even if your batting failed and you only had 120 on the board. He could be economical as well as attacking at the same time. And he could especially be a handful if you were facing him for the first time.”

Ahead of the IPL auction,Kolkata had made up their mind about Narine. And it wasn’t just their CEO who was prepared to spend whatever it took to sign him. “Gautam (Gambhir) was very particular that we had to get him in the auction,” says Kolkata assistant coach Vijay Dahiya. “He had played him before,during the ODI series against West Indies last year,and knew how good he was.”

Gambhir wasn’t alone. With Delhi and Mumbai also bidding for him,Narine ended up as the auction’s fifth most expensive purchase,Kolkata landing him for $700,000.

Narine’s IPL performances and his successes in his early ODI and first class cricket have only strengthened Ganga’s claims about the difficulty of facing him for the first time. In that,the trajectory of his career has closely mirrored the early,meteoric rise of Ajantha Mendis.

But after their initial struggles against Mendis,batsmen all around the world became used to his variations,and figured out what cues to look for. This has been the fate of nearly every mystery spinner in cricket history. Top class players somehow find a way to negate them.

Ramadhin,for instance,was quelled by the LBW law of his era. After he had taken seven for 49 in their first innings at Edgbaston in 1957,Peter May and Colin Cowdrey came together in the second innings with England three down and 175 behind. Deciding to play him as an off spinner and use their pads as the first line of defence — batsmen then could offer no shot to balls pitched outside off stump and still escape the LBW — May and Cowdrey put on a match-saving 411. Ramadhin’s figures were an astounding 98-35-179-2.

Virender Sehwag was the first player to really get to grips with Mendis,and he has already shown he can do the same to Narine. In the Indore ODI last year,when Sehwag made his record-breaking 219,Narine went for 46 in six overs. Was this a warning sign that Narine could go the Mendis way in the near future,when the video analysts finally crack his code?

“He’s been getting some very good batsmen out. But once they start reading him,he will have to find new ways to beat batsmen,” says Hirwani. “And if and when he plays Test cricket,they won’t have the pressure of having to attack him all the time.”

Ganga,meanwhile,says that batsmen can get used to Narine’s variations merely by playing him more often.

“Sunil used to bamboozle us in the nets when he had just come into the team. It took me a while trying to figure out his variations. But now we (Trinidadian batsmen) are a lot more comfortable facing him,” he says.

“There is so much video analysis these days; it’s always difficult to predict whether a particular bowler will get sorted out or not. And once you have that tag of ‘mystery’ spinner,it’s more likely that you will be,since other teams are going to dedicate extra time in trying to kill that mystery. The onus is really on Sunil to keep himself fresh as far as his skills go.

Two of a kind

Dahiya,who has watched both Mendis and Narine at the Kolkata nets,thinks Narine can cope even if batsmen do start reading him.

“The most impressive thing about Sunil isn’t his variety but how accurate he is. If we tell him to bowl all 24 balls on the same spot,he’ll do it,” he says. “And he turns his off break more than Mendis,and can fall back on this as a stock ball.”

This,perhaps,is Narine’s biggest advantage,and could hold the key to his long-term evolution. Mystery has gotten him this far,but it is unlikely to last forever.

But his command of length,his awkward pace — which makes it difficult to get to the pitch of his bowling — and that big-spinning off break may continue to test the best of batsmen.

(Inputs: Bharat Sundaresan)