As part of Total Cricket Analysis’ dedication to bringing you, the reader, a variety of ground-breaking cricket analysis from all over the globe, this is our first installation of dedicated match analysis. From now on, part of our coverage will involve diving into the archives and analysing classic matches from the past to see where they were won and lost – something not done anywhere else.
The first of this sees us going back to April 2016, and the final of the ICC T20 World Cup between England and West Indies, known of course for the incredible hitting of Carlos Brathwaite – remember the name! – that saw him catapulted into the limelight as he dispatched the last over of the match for four consecutive sixes off Ben Stokes to seal his country a second World T20 trophy after their 2012 triumph.
Here, we revisit that fateful evening in Kolkata, analysing how the match ebbed and flowed prior to the Bajan’s colossal striking.
Brilliant Badree provides the squeeze
Having won the toss and opted to bowl first, leg-spinner Samuel Badree gave a masterclass in demonstrating how to contain teams early on. He bowled his full four-over quota straight off, conceding only a paltry 14 runs in his spell including a wicket maiden – quite exceptional for a T20 game overall, let alone when three of those overs were in the opening PowerPlay with only two fielders allowed outside of the 30-yard circle.
He managed to bowl 14 dot balls in his spell, conceding only eight singles and two boundaries as he also collected two wickets: Jason Roy leg-before-wicket and Eoin Morgan caught at slip. The extremely tight, wicket-to-wicket nature of his bowling can be seen below in his delivery map.
In the arrival diagram – a measure of where the ball arrives at the batsman, representative for both right- and left-handers – the vast majority of his balls are bowled tightly, allowing the batsman no room to manoeuvre it away with ease. Indeed, the one time he did stray too far down the leg-side, he conceded a boundary (yellow dots), the same result as when he dropped a fraction too short. The majority of his deliveries landed around the off-stump area, with his lack of turn paradoxically troubling the batsmen.
As he is a leg-spinner by trade, the expectation would be for the ball to turn away from the right-hander and into the left-handers. However, Badree seldom provides much purchase on the ball, instead favouring quicker, flatter deliveries fired into the pitch with the odd googly thrown in there too. As batsmen frequently play for the spin that isn’t there, the one that goes straight on can often be their undoing. The best illustration of his strategy is the fact that he registered 19 balls with ‘no turn’, three arm balls and two googlies – not one delivered as a traditional leg-spinner.
His role with the new ball was not introduced here, though, as he frequently opened up for his side multiple times prior to this. His capabilities early on were clearly noted by the England batsmen as, although he snared two victims, not one of his deliveries was played in the air – a clear sign that England were happy to milk his bowling as opposed to looking to attack him and hit him out of the game. Six singles down the ground to long-on or long-off, with no shots at all hit in the air, represent this clearly.
Samuels and Root the glue
Within their respective innings’, the performances of Joe Root and Marlon Samuels were vital to the success of their side overall. The pair both played the role of ‘The One to Bat Around’, managing to combine a successful defence, ensuring they stayed at the crease, with strike rotation and run-scoring also.
Starting with Root’s innings, he scored 54 from 37 balls before being caught by Sulieman Benn at Short Fine Leg. He was his trademark busy self, facing only six dot balls and playing just four defensive strokes whilst hitting 18 singles and four twos as he scored at an outstanding strike-rate of 150. Although he is not a big-hitter, his aptitude at finding gaps, rotating the strike and keeping the scoreboard ticking over is an overlooked skill amongst the glamorous world of boundary clearing.
As can be seen on his arrival map above, the plethora of dot-balls around off-stump shows that he did not take risks against good balls.
However, as soon as he faced a more wayward ball he didn’t hesitate to put it away – as the best batsmen do – thanks to the presence of the yellow (fours) and blue (twos) dots. This is further strengthened by the fact that only 9% of his runs came from a good length around off-stump, but 22% came from a back-of-a-length on the same line. He was razor-sharp against anything even fractionally short, scoring 12 runs from four balls when cutting and 10 runs from four balls when pulling, and also clocked up 10 runs from just three short balls faced.
As for Man of the Match Samuels, his role was critical in allowing Brathwaite to even be in with a chance of pulling off the miracle he later produced. The experienced Samuels showed great conscientiousness to stay in amid an early collapse, his side 23/3 from five overs and then 89/4 after 12. His presence at the crease as a top-class player allowed them to take the game deep with big-hitters still to come, and he combined excellently with the similarly knowledgeable Dwayne Bravo – the pair using all the experience they gained throughout 16- and 12-year international careers respectively at this point – to put on a 75-run partnership from 73 balls in the face of a crisis.
Although Bravo fell for a run-a-ball 27, he allowed Samuels somebody to bat with and take the game deep. Samuels would end up unbeaten on 85 from 66 balls, facing 20 dot balls and 31 singles as he soaked up early pressure from the England bowlers with their tails up thanks to their three early wickets. Of the first 14 deliveries he faced only one went for more than one run, as he demonstrated his intent to protect his wicket and ensure he was going to be the man to be there at the end.
When analysing Samuels’ delivery arrival map (above), it can be seen that his boundaries came from a wider range of arrival locations than Root’s, as well as the fact that he also registered two maximums to Root’s zero. Given that Samuels faced more balls of different lines and lengths, it is no surprise that he scored boundaries from six different scoring shots as opposed to Root’s four. He was also helped by having a greater proportion of balls arriving around as leg-stump half-volleys – deliveries easy to score from – with 20% as opposed to the 14% faced by Root; the Englishman did benefit from a greater amount of shorter deliveries that he could punish, though.
Their respective knocks were very much the glue that held their side together – and in Samuels’ case arguably allowed his nation to win the title.
Windies rotate the bowlers
A clear difference in the West Indies’ approach with the ball when compared to their opponents’ was how frequently captain Daren Sammy altered his bowlers. There were only three spells greater than one over: Badree’s initial excellent four-over burst, as well as two-over spells for Benn and Bravo. This led to 15 different spells, five more than England’s bowlers who, conversely, only had three one-over spells in their 20 overs with the ball.
Sammy’s preference at consistently switching his bowlers ensured that England’s batsmen never had a chance to settle on one player’s weaknesses in particular, thus having to constantly adapt to the new man and therefore take greater chances and risks.
The Windies’ bowlers were all unique in what they brought to the attack, too. All favoured slightly different areas of the pitch in their deliveries, with their unique styles contrasting and complementing one another to good effect.
Badree’s exceptional skills have already been discussed, however the likes of Benn, alongside pace trio Bravo, Brathwaite and Russell were all able to naturally dovetail with each other.
Left-arm tweaker Benn, all 6’7” of him, looked to try and tie the batsmen down with his steepling bounce and accuracy – however, he was the one who took the most tap with figures of 0-40 from three overs, hurt by Buttler’s brilliance and powerful striking. The pitch-maps of the seamers can be seen below (NB: Sammy’s one-over spell not included).
Carlos Brathwaite
Brathwaite favoured a more varied line and length, constantly mixing his deliveries up to try and stay a step ahead of the batsman. His approach was successful, too, as he collected 3-22 from his four overs, including conceding only one boundary.
Dwayne Bravo
Bravo looked to go a touch fuller than Brathwaite, hoping to deceive with his cunning slower-balls and variations. He showed a clear preference for pitching the ball up – a third of his deliveries landing in a good length outside off-stump – with the switch-up being to pull it back-of-a-length every now and then.
Andre Russell
Finally, Russell was very much the ‘enforcer’, the bowler looking to bang it in short of a length and hope to trouble batsmen with his genuine pace. With only 17% of his balls falling in the ‘full category’, his tactic was clear to see.
Willey and Plunkett impress early on
As already alluded to, England’s method of attack was to keep their bowlers on for slightly longer in the hope of building pressure and forcing wickets – as they did so successfully early on. Although Root claimed the limelight with his dismissing of both openers in his one over, David Willey and Liam Plunkett were the two to really put a strangle on their opponents early on.
Willey, opening the bowling with his left-arm swingers, conceded only four runs from his opening two overs. Given that he only usually operates around 80mph – a speed nothing more than sedentary for world-class batsmen – he has to rely on other ways of troubling batsmen as opposed to his speed.
He is known as being one of the few bowlers on the circuit capable of extracting any swing from a white-ball – not an easy feat given its general lack of assistance it provides laterally – and so has to ensure he is constantly challenging batsmen with a fuller length to try and extract any precious moment that may be on offer. However, if even he cannot produce any sideways activity, then he often looks to bang the ball in back-of-a-length to try and cramp batsmen for room and not allow them any freebies to hit off a length. His pitch map from those two overs can be seen below.
His general preferred method here early on was to try and ensure that batsmen could not swing through the line and take advantage of his lack of pace, cramping them for room with a tight middle-and-leg line. It was this line that got rid of Lendl Simmons, albeit from a ball pitched up fuller, as he was struck on the pad and given out lbw from the first ball he faced. From his arrival map it can be seen that the Windies’ batters weren’t looking to take risks against him early on, hitting him for only four singles.
As for Plunkett, his general tactic is similar to Willey’s alternative: hammer away back of a length, bowling a heavy ball at the splice of the bat to cramp batsmen up. With his 6’3” frame and quicker delivery speed than his teammate, he has proven a match for the best players in the world in the middle overs of many limited-overs matches over the past few years thanks to his unerring accuracy forcing errors from the batsman.
Coming on in the penultimate over of the powerplay, Plunkett went for only 12 runs in his three-over spell, bowling ten dot balls and conceding just one boundary.
His penchant for the back-of-a-length delivery is witnessed in his pitch map below.
With almost half of his deliveries (47%) landing in the back-of-a-length area around off-stump, it clearly shows his tactic in full flow. He would also look to surprise batters with the odd fuller ball pushed up there, although he was punished by a fuller one that slipped too straight and was hit away for four, as well as a few genuine short balls.
Brathwaite saves Windies’ bacon
With the title seemingly out of their grasp with 19 runs required from the final over, only Brathwaite’s heroics prevented England from securing the crown and allowed the Caribbean side to party into the night.
They were behind England’s score at the same respective stage from the seventh over onwards, with the graph below indicating how far adrift they were at various stages.
The furthest they fell behind was after the 13th over, their total of 76/3 being 27 runs behind where their opponents were at the same stage. Even though they began to press the accelerator as the innings went deeper, they were still needing to score more runs off the final over than had been scored in any over the match thus far – but up stepped the big man from Barbados.
Admittedly all balls were in or around ‘the slot’ – as is seen below in his pitch map – but he still had to clear the ropes under the eyes of the world.
It required nothing short of a miracle for the Windies to win as Stokes stood with the ball in his hand prior to delivering the first ball of the final over. They were gone. Dead. Buried. But, somehow, the then-28-year-old wrote his name into cricketing folklore. It is fair to say that, ever since that famous Indian night, nobody has forgotten the name Carlos Brathwaite.