During the 2018 tour to England, the Indian team were preparing and unearthing ways to tackle the likes of Anderson and Broad. Little did they know, a young kid from Northampton would be the one to cause havoc to their batting lineup. Cut to 4 years from then, Sam Curran produced one of the best spells in T20 world cup history to take his team to a record-equalling second world T20 cup win. Sam Curran who entered the international cricketing frame as a test specialist, converted himself into a limited-overs specialist by inducing the necessary variations and an intellectual insight in the shortest format of the game. In this blog, let us have a more analytical look at his recent performances in the T20 world cup.
Match Phase-wise Analysis
This statistical take gives a clear indication of the versatility that Curran possesses’ across all the phases. He can be used with the new ball in the powerplay due to his ability to swing the ball and get the ball to the seam after pitching. His false shot percentage of 43 tells us the impact that he can create in a batsman’s mind, irrespective of his high strike rate. He can also be used as a partnership breaker in the middle overs with a much better economy rate and strike rate.
But what stood out in Curran’s bowling was his astronomical figures in the death overs. A total of 9 out of his 13 wickets have come in this phase at a fantastic economy rate of 6.67 and a very high false shot percentage of nearly 48. His ability to nail in the variations such as taking the pace off or changing the lengths frequently confused the batsman and led to their downfall. One of his more overlooked performances in T20 has been his death-over bowling against Mumbai Indians in the 2021 season of IPL, which unearthed his talents as a death-over specialist.
Phase-wise Pitch Map Analysis
The above pitch map gives Curran’s impact in each phase of the play. He has pitched up a lot of deliveries to batsmen early on due to the bounce he was able to extract with the new ball. As we can see from the pitch map, a majority of his deliveries were in the short-length or back-of-length zone in the powerplay and this has also reaped benefits for him.
Now coming to the middle overs, here Sam Curran was brought back into the attack usually after the 10th over when England needed a crucial breakthrough. So he further varied his lengths marginally and started to bowl a lot more in the back of the length region, tempting the batsman to go for the shot. He also bowled a few deliveries a bit fuller than his previous deliveries but didn’t reap many rewards.
In the death overs, Curran showcased a wide variety of skill sets. While he still bowled a lot of shorter-length deliveries, he also attempted to bowl a lot of fuller and yorker-length deliveries with good variations in the line of the delivery. His ability to bowl both toe cruisers and wide yorkers is a huge asset to his already wide skill set.
Conclusion
Sam Curran is a force to be reckoned with in the shortest format. His recent performances will definitely raise the eyebrows of each and every team of the IPL. This will in turn lead to a very intriguing watch of the auctions. Another thing not to be overlooked is his terrific batting abilities which we haven’t seen for a while. So it will be interesting to see how Sam Curran takes his game from here onwards.
