IND vs WI | Ravi Bishnoi under the scanner

Ravi Bishnoi in action for India

After completing a whitewash in the ODI Series, the Indian team marched on to a comfortable victory in the first T20I against West Indies.

Riding on a blistering knock by Dinesh Karthik and the brilliance of the spinners India won the match by 68 runs. The Indian team management read the conditions better than the home team and fielded three spinners on a seemingly slow track.

While all the three Indian spinners did a great job with the ball, in this article let us focus on the newest spin sensation, Ravi Bishnoi. 

Rohit Sharma brought in Bishnoi in the 12th over of the innings when the West Indians were 4 wickets down for 82 runs. In the next 8 overs, the young spinner bowled his quota of four and picked up 2 wickets conceding just 26 runs.

The figures look excellent for a T20 match, but is he ready for the international stage? Has he got enough maturity and variety to go the distance for the Men in Blue?

One-dimensional bowling: After watching today’s match one may feel that Bishnoi lacks variety. Before justifying such a big claim let us look at the variations used by the spinner in today’s match. 

(Values in Percentage)

As we see, nearly 89 percent of Bishnoi’s deliveries were googlies. Now let us look at the line he has bowled in the match. 

So, most of his balls have been outside the off-stump. Now let us have a look at the lengths Bishnoi landed on in the match.

As we see he has preferred the good length area. 

Bishnoi’s plan of bowling: So, the general plan of bowling in the match for Bishnoi has been bowling outside the off-around the good length area and bringing the ball into the batter. He has looked to cramp the batters for room.

But he has overused this ploy in the match. If he plays in the next match and goes deploying similar plans he might take the stick. So, the immediate course of action for the young bowler should be to try and use more of the variations he has in his arsenal rather than being a one-dimensional bowler. 

Why did his plan work today?

To answer this question let us look at the batters he bowled most to today.

So, most of his deliveries were to batters coming to bat at numbers 7-10. The batters were looking to just go after him without even trying to read his deliveries. This is the prime reason, Bishnoi’s plans worked out for the day.

Given a better opposition and better batters, I have doubts how far Bishnoi will work out for India, as long as he stays one-dimensional.