How to face Rashid Khan! | DK and Eoin Morgan discuss how to bat against the new age of leg-spinners

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Eoin Morgan and Dinesh Karthik discuss the best ways to face leg-spin with Rashid Khan and Noor Ahmad impressing early on in this years Hundred.

#cricket #rashidkhan #legspin

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Yeah, don’t take any notes from me. They would have bamboozled with me. But luckily, I’ve got a couple of BS alongside who could actually play. Rashi Khan’s been around a little bit longer than Nord Ammed. So, just to take a look first and foremost at those who have probably played him a little bit better with a better strike rate and very rarely get out to. I’ve just made a list of top five strike rates. 50 balls minimum face. So, Darcy Short, the Aussie left-hander right at the top. Shane Watson, brilliant IPL player and Australian player. Surya Kumar Yadav, one of the best T20 players in world cricket. The man alongside me, Owen Morgan. and Sanju Samson a wicket keeper which is something I’m going to talk to DK about a little later about reading spin from a keeping point of view Owen Morgan Desh Kartik thanks for your time gent how do you play the likes of Rashid I mean you have have been successful against Rashid what’s the key to playing him in particular yeah here I think when when playing against any worldass bowler there there are a number of challenges but certainly from the things that I would take into playing against a world-class bowler would be preparation know what you’re trying to face know what you’re coming up against and then devise a plan from there. And that game plan is so so important. It was actually a conversation with uh a colleague of mine at Middle Sex, Paul Sterling, who he plays for Ireland, had played against Afghanistan for a number of years. They used to play against each other all the time, but actually my plan revolved around one that had worked successfully from him. Rashid Khan is a bowler that is extremely difficult to pick and he operates around 55 to 60 miles per hour. Doesn’t go up and over like a natural wrist spinner. He’s more of a finger spinner out of the side of the hand. The strength he has in his fingers is incredible. So establishing what plan worked for Paul and then trying to apply it to my game was key. And that that’s what I did when I I played against I played against him when he was playing for Sussex in the blast and then in the World Cup in 2019. What was the key to this? Yeah, here it was taking him down. It started as trying to So a lot of these shots that I’ve capitalized on were a result of playing a sweep shot early, not necessarily getting a boundary away with a sweep shot, but it forced him to bowl back of a length. And for me that helped because it allowed me time then to pick the ball off the surface and then predominantly target the leg side. And that’s what you want to try and do. You want to try and put the bowler under as much pressure as possible. So that game plan revolved around trying to put him off his initial line and length which was full early with sweep shots and then once he ball back of a length preempt that a little bit which is exactly what the modernday batter the current batter now has actually changed their game plan to Rashid Kam they now hang back and hit the ball off back of a length guys like Henrik Henrik and Jos Butler two of which are playing tonight so we’ll see that contest and that matchup. So I’d say that’s how my initially started and then I earned the right to go back and pull the ball. DK for you I mean obviously in India you see a lot of wrist spinner face a lot of it keep to a lot of it. How do you go about playing a wrist spinner and picking length from a batting point of view first and foremost? One of the keys to playing a wrist spinner is to either play it really in front when it’s just bounces or stay deep in the crease. So what happens when you look to play it right in front? A strong shot that you can play to a ball that is really full is a sweep shot because then you’re taking the spin out of the equation. When a wrist spinner is bowling and you don’t pick him, especially under lights, it becomes really hard. What is the hard part is not understanding which way the ball is going to turn. So you want to straight away put pressure on him by removing the spin out of the equation. So you either go really fully in front and play the sweep shot and then you hang back where you have time to see which way the ball spins and then you can decide where to hit it. What happens a lot of the times is batters try and find a way to pick the spin which can be hard and then he brings the thumbs and your front pad into play and a lot of people have surfboards when they play him. So it gets that much harder but the fact is that you want to put pressure back by playing a shot which will then change his length a bit and then you start dictating terms. That’s the key for me to play any wrist spinner in the world. Depth of the crease using the depth of the crease a lot. Yeah, massively here. I think it’s worth saying as well your your current wrist spinner some of the best in the world can he’s not trying to turn the ball dramatically. So getting so he’s trying to turn at a half a width of the bat. So it’s only this much. So getting either closer to the ball or further away from the ball is very very important. And if you can preempt what the bowler’s plan is for each and every ball, it helps your decision making ability. Somebody like an AB Dillars was absolutely brilliant at it. He would recognize when the bowler was going full. He’d look to sweep and reverse sweep and then he’d sit back ever so slightly. Even when the ball’s just being released is when you want to move. You don’t want to give them more information than they already have. So all of that information then calculates into your game plan and then fully commit to it. Wrist spinners, mystery spinners, they feed off any tentative uh game plans or guys trying to execute. So try and be convincing as well with what you’re trying to do. On a Rashid and Nure, I think their greatest strength is the pace they bowl DK. We take a look at Rashid. He he rushes onto the bat really quickly. That’s what makes it more difficult. That’s his plus and minus. The plus is the fact that he gives you very little time to decide what shot to play. The minus is the fact that the quicker you bowl, the lesser turn you’re going to get from the pitch. So then you can almost look to play for the ball that turns slightly in or slightly away and decide which shot to play. The key to playing someone like Rashid Khan is to try and first protect your thumbs. Play for the ball that comes back in. So whenever you’re in doubt, protect your stumps and when you feel you want to attack, then try and get either fully forward and play the step hit or really hang back and play everything of the back foot. If you get caught mid land, then you’re going to be in trouble. And we don’t see I mean we’re seeing a lot more now from a left arm wrist spin point of view. And and that’s what makes them so difficult for a lot of time. We didn’t see too many of them. There are more now. Nure is one of those guys. Probably the wrong that goes away from the righties into you lefties is probably his more dangerous ball. Yeah, without doubt. Uh again, the the the principle of how you take a wicket still remains the same. You’re targeting the stumps and Nura or Ahmed is exactly a good example of that because if you’re not targeting the stumps, you allow a batter almost a free hit. Look at him target. goes across on the angle to the righty. And remember, not every ball is being picked here. Absolute beauties bowling with scramble seam across using the angle as well. He’s not afraid to bring it back whenever he wants either. But again, like Rashep, this is what you get. You get once you have the hero, once you have it happen after War’s absolute legacy, there were a couple of legies that came through trying to replicate him. It’s not easy, but the hero model is there. DK, I’m surprised to see only one spinner, one keeper batter on that list than Sandrew Samson. Do you think keepers have a better time batting against these guys because they read it better? I would say they read it better. The one shot most spinner, most keepers play really well is the sweep shot. Sometimes they don’t have any other shot other than that, but that they do nicely. And hence playing spin comes slightly more easily. Also, you got to understand when you do keeping, you do so much of it to wrist spinners. Subconsciously, it’s embedded in your mind as to what you want to pick. And we’re slightly ahead of the normal batter in playing wrist spin at times. And the fact that we have a lot of lower body strength, so we stay slightly crouched at our crease, so we pick up cues much better than a lot of others would do help spinners bat really well. But if you see that stat, he’s the only wicket keeping batsman who’s on that which tells you that batters have gotten really good as well. And the one consistent thread through the top five batters, people who play the slog sweep well with a flat battered swing seem to have taken him down a lot better. Flatbed swing always negates how much spin is there on the pitch and that is a very useful tool to have when you play some of these wrist spinners. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Some great insights there and maybe how to look after Rasheed no if you got a wrist spinner in your club side or you’re coming up against one next weekend. Look forward to that.