IPL 2023: Smashed for a couple of sixes in the last over, Sandeep Sharma would do a couple of smart tweaks: The angle and the length. Here is how he did it. “Chris Gayle doesn’t like it when the ball moves from his right eye to left.” Insightful, incisive, and yet simple from Sandeep Sharma, just like his bowling then. Sharma’s art lies in bending the ball across a batsman’s visual field. A swing bowler couldn’t have explained the essence of his art better than that comment about Gayle made a couple of years back.
On Wednesday night, after MS Dhoni slugged yorkers that slipped out as full tosses for a couple of sixes, the situation looked bleak. On air, at Jio Cinema Bhojpuri, actor, politician and commentator Ravi Kishan would scream, “Mahendra Bahubali Dhoni … hamaar bhaju mey itna taakat .. (I have so much strength on my arms)”. Dhoni had the smarts, the brawn, and temperament to use everything against Sandeep. What would Sandeep Singh come up with
He switched angles to round the stumps.
If Gayle could be halted by the ball moving from his right eye to left, Sandeep was going to try taking it from left eye to right for Dhoni. Across their bodies, basically. And so he went for it. The first was a skidder from back of length – not a bad length for Dhoni who sets himself for short balls or the full ones. It went across from leg to off and Dhoni mistimed the heave to deep midwicket for a single.
Now Sandeep Singh switched the angles again (going over the wicket) for the left-hander Ravindra Jadeja, who had smashed Jason Holder, bowling from round the stumps, for two sixes and a four to bring the game into the realms of possibility for CSK. A well-outside off yorker was served up and Jadeja could only dig it out for a single.
Now, Sandeep Singh had to prevent Dhoni from walloping a six off the final ball.
He had his head down, deep in thought, hand ruffling his sweaty hair, as he walked back to the top of his run-up. Dhoni would do his usual routine left shoulder jerking in a circular motion, steely eyes, breathing as normal in control as he can that he strives for, and swung into his off-stump stance, inside the crease.
Sandeep went round the stumps, again. He ran in a touch slower as he approached the crease, or so it seemed, gathering his arms in his style – the left hand moving as if it were drawing the curtains and right arm going up and ahead. It was the yorker. Brave call, considering the two full-tosses before. But this was inch-perfect, dipping in on the off-stump line, past the popping crease, radar-ed to perfection. Dhoni could only jab it out for a single.
Sandeep would gently put his right index finger up, and not make too much fuss about his achievement. A lovely smile would settle on his face shortly.
Once considered the king of Powerplays, a comment from Virender Sehwag prompted him to work on his bowling in the end overs. “Next year tere ko bahut maar padegi (you will get hit a lot),” he tells Sportsadda in an Instagram chat about what Sehwag told him in 2014. He was 21 then, had taken 18 wickets in that IPL for Kings XI Punjab and feeling happy with the world when the coach Sehwag jolted him.
“They will be prepared for your swing. They will see you off for the first two overs and then smash you,” Sehwag had told him, he says. Asked what he should do, Sehwag told him to “learn yorkers and come”. That he did, bettered the economy rate and sought out Sehwag at the end of the tournament in 2015. ‘What should I learn next year?’ “Learn wide yorker and come.” And so that too came in.
“When I would bowl in the death overs.
I was trying to figure out how I could bowl my variations like knuckle ball, bowling wide outside off, and out-swinger from around the stumps in the death overs. Mentally it was almost the same as the batsman trying to hit in the death overs just like in the powerplay,” he once told The Indian Express.
In 2014, Sharma had suffered a stress fracture and while he made his debut for India in the Zimbabwe tour in 2015, he had to undergo a surgery post a shoulder injury. It would take 18 months to achieve peak fitness and he had to relearn the ability to swing the ball.
“The shoulder surgery was a major setback in my career.
- Before that, I was bowling around 130-134 KPH. 80 percent of my shoulder was damaged and the muscle got shortened by 5-6 inches after the surgery. So when I started bowling again, my bowling arm would not come near my ear.
- Prior to the injury, things like in-swingers came naturally to me but post-surgery, I had to spend a lot of time changing wrist position and had to do stuff consciously to make that happen,” Sharma would say.
- The social media has now and then trolled him for his lack of pace and other stuff but Sandeep said he doesn’t bother. “I don’t care and I don’t listen to what people are saying. People always talk or discuss things which you don’t have. People don’t talk about what we have.”