Lucknow Super Giants have the perfect four-spinner attack for the slow turners they play on, but they lost successive home games to teams with two frontline spinners each in their sides.
The idea that bowlers have little agency in T20 cricket is only just becoming mainstream, especially with the Impact Player lengthening batting orders and raising risk-taking ability. Cricket does include luck in every format, but in a format so short, the correlation between the quality of the delivery and the outcome is hard to establish.
So Ellis thought he would protect the leg side, and bowl straight. This time too he was not off the mark, but Suryakumar played the slice-drive over point again. Because it was a slower delivery, it didn’t go for a six but got Mumbai four runs.
Haunted, Ellis went back to Plan A. And again Suryakumar fetched it from outside off, and somehow imparted enough force into the scoop for the slower ball to clear short fine leg for another couple of runs.
At the time of the publishing of that piece, Suryakumar had scored 46% of his runs in the last two-and-a-half years behind square at a strike rate of 230.4, hitting a boundary every 2.4 balls he played in that region. In Wednesday’s innings of 66 off 31, Suryakumar sent 14 balls behind for more than half of his runs, hitting a boundary almost every second ball he played there, scoring at 270.
The thing is, if Kings had gone to protect both the boundaries behind square, they would have had to open up either extra cover or midwicket. Suryakumar is not shy of hitting fours and sixes there either.
Of course, there was nothing new to what Suryakumar did in setting up the successful chase of 215, but just imagine: in a format where bowlers matter little, they mean even less to Suryakumar. That swagger when he chewed gum and acknowledged the applause for his fifty was fitting.