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Follow UsArshdeep Singh has been a curious case for the Indian cricket team. He broke into the national team at the back of a few successful seasons in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for Punjab Kings.
Apart from being a left-arm seamer, his specialties lied in swinging the new ball, nailing his yorkers at the death and surprising the batters with impactful bouncers. However, he also developed the habit of missing his yorkers which made him expensive on occasions.
In bilateral T20Is in India or whenever the conditions didn’t offer much, he would also become hittable in the powerplay. Thus, he would be nullified both at the start and the end of the innings, where pacers are supposed to be most effective. Add to it, his incessant no balls under pressure. He has the record for bowling the most no balls for an Indian pacer in T20Is (17), nine more than the next on the tally that is Jasprit Bumrah.
In 42 T20Is between 2022 and 2023, Arshdeep went at an economy of 10 or more 13 times, which is only in every third or fourth game. These matches brought only 11 wickets for him. In the high-scoring 2024 IPL season, the 25-year-old was at par with the average economy rate in the season. The selectors backed him for the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and USA, given he had been among India’s first-choice seamers in the format for a couple of years.
And this tournament couldn’t have come at a better time for the left-arm seamer. Such have been the conditions that scoring runs has become a Herculean task. And such are Arshdeep’s USP that he becomes unplayable when there is any lateral movement available.
In three matches, he has snapped seven wickets at 10.3 runs apiece while maintaining an economy of 6.7. Four of these wickets have come in the powerplay where Arshdeep has swung the ball with precision enough to keep the top-order batters guessing.
Just ask Shayan Jahangir. Playing ahead of the injured Monank Patel, Jahangir was the first victim of Arshdeep’s 4/9, the best bowling figures by an Indian bowler in a T20 World Cup match.
Jahangir received a ripper facing the first ball of the match. The ball curled in from the off-stump line to pin the right-handed batter right in front of the stumps. A classical right-handed batter’s dismissal against a left-arm seamer. Arshdeep finished the over with the wicket of Andries Gous, reducing USA to 3/2 after the first over.
Three bowlers have struck twice in the first over of the match in this World Cup. All three have been left-arm seamers (Arshdeep, Ruben Trumplemann and Fazalhaq Farooqi), confirming help for the most threatening wicket-taking bowler type with the new ball in these conditions.
Arshdeep has averaged only 7.2 runs per wicket bowling at an economy of 5.2 in this phase.
When the USA threatened to get to the competitive 120-run mark, Arshdeep returned for his third over, persuading Nitish Kumar to pull the ball towards the big square boundary where Mohammed Siraj took a brilliant catch. In his last over, he bounced out Harmeet Singh.
Arshdeep, thus, took wickets either of the good length or the back-of-a-length region. These have been the most mischievous zones for fast bowlers in terms of causing the ball to misbehave. In fact, six of Arshdeep’s seven scalps have come off these regions.
Four wickets from the good length, two from back-of-a-length that enable his bouncers and one off a yorker. Also, with good length being so productive, he can stay away from bowling full or the pressure of going for the yorkers which may result in hittable full tosses or slot balls. Hence, the 2024 T20 World Cup sums up Arshdeep’s strengths as a bowler.
“Wicket is helpful for pacers, we're getting seam movement so we had to hit the right lengths and let the pitch help out,” Arshdeep, the Player of the Match, said encapsulating the same after his spell set up India’s seven-wicket win.
