Last throw of the dice

Ashish Nehra huffs and puffs to steady his nerves,even as captain Sourav Ganguly chirps into his ears,undoing the breathing exercises. Six runs,one ball,Pakistan on the brink of the impossible again. Javed Miandad watches from the dressing room,while Moin Khan tries to emulate a feat that only his coach pulled off during his playing days. India had been at the wrong end of this equation once against the hosts. Surely there couldn’t be a repeat.

Nehra wobbles in,and pulls the trigger on the yorker. He misses,and bowls a wide full-toss. A surprised Khan slices it down mid-on’s throat. India win by not conceding the nine runs in the final over. Phew,they go collectively. In such ‘rare’ situations,Ganguly explains later,the yorker is the key. Even if it goes wrong,he argues,the alarming full-toss is almost as hard to get away. Then,eight years later,the pair try it again.

Fast forward to the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore,and it’s not just a different country,but a vastly changed cricketing world. Even Nehra doesn’t breathe so hard anymore. Pune Warriors skipper Ganguly,with arms clasped against chest,perhaps wonders if 21 runs could be defended in the last over. Bangalore’s AB de Villiers doesn’t think so and gyrates all over the batting crease. With a reverse scoop that is eventually played off his elbow guard,he simultaneously forces Ganguly to think of a long-stop,and Nehra about the yorker.

The yorker flies over long-off for six,the following back-of-a-length ball is paddle- flicked over fine-leg for another maximum and with a single off the penultimate ball,novice Saurabh Tiwary is left to score at a strike-rate of 300. Nehra misses the yorker,again,and Tiwary clubs the full-toss over his head for twice the number of required runs. Ganguly says ‘These things happen,’ and Nehra lives to fight another day. Now,there are plenty of Miandads around.

One ball,many runs

It doesn’t surprise anyone anymore. Not in a game where sixes are easier to achieve than twos (a cumulative total of eight doubles were scored by Royal Challengers Bangalore and Pune Warriors,Gayle hit as many sixes in his innings alone),a format where maintaining a run-rate of 20 plus is commonplace; and in a league where every second game goes down to the wire.

In the 36 completed games of this edition of the IPL so far,27 have gone into the last over of the second innings. Of those,the results of 14 matches pendulumed with poise on the aforementioned wire between the batting and the bowling sides. The outcomes,however,have been rather one-sided. Eleven times the team batting second has won,while the bowling side have succeeded just thrice (see box below). And in each of the matches where victories were engineered with free stroking willows,a yorker gone wrong has always paid an unforgiving price.

This,therefore,brings us to the dreaded paradox. A yorker remains the most effective run-choking delivery at the death,in any format of the game. But if it isn’t executed with pinpoint accuracy,the results are adverse,if not fatal. So,what really is the cost of aiming at the blockhole in the IPL? And are there other ways for a bowling side to deal with a last-over crisis situation? Deccan Chargers coach Darren Lehmann believes that the answers are ‘high’ and ‘yes’ respectively.

“You’ve got to be a mentally solid bowler with a few improvisations to deal with the last over of a tight game,and we’ve seen plenty of those finishes in this IPL,” says Lehmann. “Don’t get me wrong,I still feel that there is no substitute for a well bowled yorker. It’s still the hardest ball to get away for runs. But the big problem is,not too many bowlers have gotten it right and we’ve seen too many full-tosses being sprayed around at the death.” The former Aussie bat is of course speaking from experience,after having harrowingly watched his bowler Dan Christian concede two sixes with as many full-tosses against the Mumbai Indians in the 20th over – the first of many tense encounters this season.

The first seed

Chasing 139 for victory,Mumbai required a herculean effort from Rohit Sharma,who then had the daunting task of accumulating 18 runs from the final over. Christian assisted with the first of the full-tosses in his third ball,which Rohit slashed over the point fence for six. Then he bowled one more — the last ball of the match — and Rohit merrily dumped that into concrete seats behind the midwicket hoardings of the ACA-VDCA Stadium.

A former Chargers lad himself,Rohit has gone on to excel at both feeding off non-pitching balls and exacting revenge. His 50 in a stiff chase against the Kings XI Punjab crowned MI victorious with a ball to spare – avenging their last over defeat in the first leg,where Shaun Marsh had collared a low full-toss bowled by Mumbai’s Thisara Perera past the sweeper stands for six.

“Realistically speaking,no bowler is perfect enough to bowl six yorkers in the last over of the game. But still,I anticipate them trying it all the time,” says Rohit. “So with Christian in the Chargers match and Praveen Kumar in the Punjab game at Mohali,I stood well outside my crease knowing fully well that they were going to attempt a full length ball. That meant that even if they did get it right,I would still have enough room to find the boundary. And in the last over,those boundaries can turn the outcome on its head.”

Rohit feels that one has to always be prepared,for these days matches more often than not are decided when the 40th over of the tie is bowled. “This phenomenon is because today’s IPL teams are not just top-order heavy,but there is always one big-hitting batsman present to just finish matches,” he says. “There is always one guy until the very last ball.”

Finishing act

He makes an interesting point,considering T20 cricket,in its nascent stages,was thought to be too short to save a proper batsman until the very end. Now,a de Villiers is rarely unleashed before the fifteenth over of a chase,while fellow countryman Albie Morkel has caused maximum damage this season by walking into the middle in the 19th over of the game.

Weapons of choice

With a near impossible sum of 43 runs to win off 2 overs,RCB skipper Daniel Vettori tossed the ball to Virat Kohli,in an attempt to save his best death bowler,Vinay Kumar,for last. Kohli,whose action was famously described by a stand-up comedian as a mix of bowling while trying to take one’s shirt off,was stripped bare by Morkel — 4,6,4,6,2,6 resulting in 28 runs in the penultimate over. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Vinay ended up conceding the remaining 15 with two full-tosses in the 20th.

Like Vettori,IPL captains have often been made to take a result-hinging call of bowling out the best or saving him for later,and the Kiwi hasn’t been the only leader to err in his judgement. Chennai’s MS Dhoni exhausted his best bet Nuwan Kulasekara in the 19th,and Yo Mahesh conceded a six and a four in the 20th. The captain later said that ‘Yomi will learn from such experiences.’

Similarly,Adam Gilchrist had to choose between Piyush Chawla and the wily Azhar Mahmood for the 19th,when Mumbai still required 32 from 2 overs. He chose Chawla,who conceded 27 before Mahmood shuffled his variations around and made the remaining 5 runs a real task – giving it away only off the second last ball of the game. Mahmood shrugged with a wry smile at the end,as did everyone else at the receiving end of such harshness — such as Christian or Kohli. Yo Mahesh or Nehra.

“While bowling in the death overs,you have to be ready for any eventuality,” says Nehra,who bowled the penultimate over against the Chennai Super Kings in the following match and redeemed himself with stellar figures of 2/23 from four overs. “It’s a constant game of wit.”

Then he pauses,perhaps running a reel of his career last overs in his mind,before saying: “You see,luck plays a big role. Sometimes,you bowl a wide full-toss and get away with it. At other times,a perfect yorker ends up in the second tier of the stadium.”

(With inputs from Shamik Chakrabarty)