Sunil Narine: Mystery or History?

When KKR launched Sunil Narine in IPL5, they were criticized by all the cricketing experts but the gamble paid off and they eventually won that edition of the IPL. Why were they subjected to such harsh words? Simply put, West Indians and spinners do not go together. It is the land of fast bowlers with the likes of world-beaters like Walsh, Holding, Garner, Ambrose – the list is endless! Considering that Carl Hooper and Chris Gayle who are at best part times figure at #4 and #5 on the all-time leading wicket takers for West Indies, you can see where I am heading. Narine’s entry on the international circuit was pretty much similar to Ajantha Mendis, who flummoxed many including Sachin Tendulkar with his carom ball.

What Narine has to his advantage is a lean and tall body which enables him to release the ball from a height. He has a very straight arm action which makes it even difficult to read him. The off-spinner and the knuckle ball seem to have the same action and has a similar flick of the index and middle fingers. He bowls his off spin with a scrambled seam which makes it a split second decision for a batsman to judge his delivery. However, this was before slow-motion videos and technology which enables the viewer atleast to watch the entire trajectory of a bowler step by step.

Teams these days invest so much time in “off-the-field” practice by analyzing videos of such mystery bowlers that the novelty of such a bowler can only last so long. They have experts and analysts and statisticians travelling with the team who will decode the entire history of the bowler and present it to the batsmen. You even have bowling machines that simulate the deliveries of a bowler, although the exact arm variation may not be simulated. (Infact, I’ve faced a bowling machine which has the virtual image of many international bowler in the same action and then the machine releases the ball!). With so much technology at hand, you cannot have bowlers suddenly coming onto the international stage and go unnoticed, a la ‘Iqbal’.

True, Narine has been the best bowler in the IPL since his launch, however, the true litmus test of a cricket is Test Cricketer and in 5 tests with just 15 wickets, that is definitely not a start you expect from a bowler of his calibre. He needs to have more variations that just the variations in his arm and work on his bowling to have more deliveries. He is a bowler who bowls with a flat trajectory and once the novelty of his action is decoded, he won’t be able to pick wickets without flighting the ball, which is one of the basics of spin bowling, propagated by all the spin greats. In the recent ODI series concluded against India, he managed just a dismal 2 wickets in 3 games.

Will he too go the Mendis way and fade away? Time will tell.