On August 10th 2019, India exited the 2019 World Cup at the semi-finals stage against New Zealand despite being branded as one of the favourites to lift the trophy. Having a near-perfect and a flawless tournament until then (topping the group stage), with their only defeat against the champions England, their issues were widely exposed by the determined Kiwis.
The bowlers were doing well with the likes of Shami and Bumrah leading them from the front and the spinners too played a decent job in difficult conditions. But it was in the batting department that many experts had concern with having a lack of a strong middle-order batsman. The selectors played a huge gamble in dropping Ambati Rayudu, a seasoned middle-order batsman, for Vijay Shankar, an untested all-rounder. Eventually, the decision proved to be fatal as Shankar made no significant contribution to a batting department that was carried by the world-class top-order batsmen in Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan (though he was later replaced due to injury).
New Zealand blew the top-order in the semi-finals and India’s weaknesses, lack of a strong number four batsman, were exposed that sent them packing home despite a brilliant piece of cricket from Jadeja and Dhoni at the end. With the retirement of MS Dhoni and Suresh Raina in the past week, the options for the number four batman have reduced. In this article, we will be looking at the rest of the options India needs to consider or prepare to groom for the upcoming three vital years that hosts three major tournaments. We will be using data analysis and statistics to analyze the options we have and shortlist the top picks. Let’s begin the analysis.
Background
The players that are taken into consideration are Ambati Rayudu, Manish Pandey, KL Rahul, Dinesh Karthik and Rishab Pant. The likes of Dhoni and Raina were supposed to be taken into consideration if not for their retirement in the past week. But we have used them in the charts to compare them with the likes of the other players since both have been experienced campaigners and have set as benchmarks for the other players.
Overview of their Career stats
Before going into the in-depth analysis of the mentioned players, we’ll first look at how their career stats rake up until this point. First, let’s compare the averages of each of the players we have mentioned.
From the chart, we can see some extremely consistent performers. MS Dhoni’s achievements need no introduction as he has been one of the all-time greats in the limited-overs format. Despite a steady decline in his performances since 2015, he had maintained his career average just above 50 thanks to his ability to remain not-out at the end of the innings and some unreal consistency before 2015. Raina also has a great average for someone being deployed as a lower-order batsman for the latter part of his career. In comparison with them, we have both KL Rahul and Ambati Rayudu maintaining a healthy career average at 47.65 and 47.05 respectively. The lowest of the lot is Rishabh Pant, who averages just 26.71, though it could be attributed to his inexperience and age.
The strike rate can give a much more elaborated look on the style in which Rishabh Pant plays. He is a high risk, high reward batsman who looks to go after the bowler aggressively. In his short career though, he hasn’t lived up to the potential he set when he played in the IPL with this approach. The lowest is Dinesh Karthik which is quite surprising given that his List-A cricket strike rate stands at 91.73. This shows that he hasn’t been able to replicate his domestic success in the international arena. Ambati Rayudu typically has the average you find in a no.4 batsman belonging to the previous generation, where their role is generally to play as a floater by traversing through the tricky middle overs. The others on the list generally have a good and a healthy strike rate.
Record as a No.4 batsman
Now coming to the picture, we will be analyzing their stats as a No.4 batsman. First, let’s look at the number of innings that each of the players that we have seen have played in this position. MS Dhoni had played the most number of innings among the batsmen (30), but it comprised only just 10% of his total innings.
The first comparative metric that we will be looking at is their Runs/Innings in that position. The reason why the average is not considered here is that it (No. 4) is a position in modern-day cricket where some teams deploy their hard-hitting finishers and some teams deploy a floater who likes to keep the scoreboard ticking. So there might be discrepancies here as some of the batsmen might not get a chance to score big but he remains not-out whereas another batsman are after scoring quick-fire runs, gets out.
As per this metric again MSD comes out on top with 45.27 runs on average every innings. The second best is Raina, with an average of 37.5 runs. This is the reason why we choose both of them as a comparison tool as both of them have had a stellar limited-overs career. Among the current batsmen, Rayudu completes the top three and the 30+ list while averaging 31.2 runs. The rest of them except KL Rahul average in the 20s while Rahul averages just 13 runs which are in stark contrast to his career average at 47.65. This can be attributed to the fact that he has played very few innings and has proven to be a much more capable top-order batsman in the meantime. But his IPL record suggests that he can do reasonably well if given a chance in that position. He has scored 324 runs from 11 innings at an average of 46.29 and strike-rate of 130.65. Both of them are clear cut strong indicators that he can do well if given extended chances in that position.
Record against spin
Being a No.4 batsman, the average overs at which he’ll be playing the majority of his innings is between 15 and 40. These are the overs where a team play their spinners and a team having 2 spinners at least would complete 20 of their 25 overs in between using the spinner. So it’s important to look into their record against spin bowling.
In the chart above, we have plotted the averages of each of the player against pace and spin bowling. Since our focus is on the spin bowling, let’s analyze that. While facing spinners, we see that Ambati Rayudu has been the best in tackling them as he has gotten out comparatively fewer amount of times while also scoring runs against them (average of 37.11). Next, following him is MS Dhoni. Dhoni has been one of the most successful batsmen in playing against spin. His most famous innings against Sri Lanka in the 2011 World Cup final saw him counter-attack one of the greatest spinners of all time in Muttiah Muralitharan. So edging him in terms of average against the spinners speaks volumes about Amabati Rayudu’s ability to play against spinners. Again the average of Dinesh Karthik against spinner is not surprising as he is known for his counter-attacking approach against them which reflects on his average. KL Rahul’s preference over facing pace bowlers is well seen here as he averages 39.88 against them while averaging only 26.25 against spinners.
Rishabh Pant also seems to favour the pacers though he fared poorly against both in his short period. Manish Pandey here seems to be in a unique category as he has almost the same averages against both the pacers (19.55) and the spinners (14) and both are below 20. This shows that he is quite versatile against both the sect of bowlers and not inclining to a particular type of bowler which is also a good thing. A thing to be noted here is that less average here means nothing and it doesn’t quantify the ability of a batsman. The key thing we are seeing here is comparing averages against pace and spin with each other. Pandey’s averages are low in both the cases but his overall career average is still 35+.
Home and Away records
It’s important to analyze the player’s record in India and the same for Away. The reason is that in the next 3 years, there is going to be 2 limited-overs World Cups in India (2021 T20 WC and 2023 50 overs WC) and one in Australia (2022 T20 WC). So it’s important to get a contextual look into their performances at home and overseas.
Comparing them we can see that the likes of Karthik, Pant and Rayudu performing well at home with better Runs/Innings ratio. Whereas Pandey and Rahul have good averages overseas though Rahul shows little variation, Pandey’s average seems to be at the extreme with a huge variation. This can again give a context to how Pandey fares much better in pacy conditions than in the spin-friendly Indian conditions. Rayudu seems to be faring equally well at both the condition as he is another player that shows little variation with the change of environment.
Final Pick(s)
Based on our analysis and putting the players to test under different variables, we can say that our top picks for the number four Indian Batsman are:-
KL Rahul – Rahul’s versatility is proven that despite being a great opener and so good against fast bowlers, he shows no signs of vulnerability against the spinners and seems to have consistently performed well at home as well in the away matches. Though his record as a number four is least impressive, it is of the fact that he has been deployed there very few times. His IPL record as a number four batsman is very good as he averages 46.3 striking the ball at a rate 130+. Given that he is an aggressive batsman and 2 T20 world cups coming in the next two years, it’s high time that they start deploying him there and making him a complete number four batsman before the 2023 WC.
Manish Pandey – Pandey has been largely in and out of the side despite being highly rated for the most of his career. Still only 30 and with loads of career left in him, Pandey could seriously be the answer India might be looking for from a number four batsman. His performances for Sunrisers in the IPL have shown that he can be a reliable player. Also, his record away from home is tremendous which is not quite usual with many players. With some good performances in IPL and the domestics season, he could be back as the number one contender in taking up the role.
Ambati Rayudu – The most experienced among the chosen picks for the number four position, Rayudu was extremely unlucky to have missed out on a WC spot last year which was criticized heavily from all corners. His records indicate that he is a no-brainer for that particular position, even ahead of the likes of Rahul. The only thing going against him is his age as he will be 37 by the time 2023 WC starts. If he can manage to stay fit for the next two years and prove himself, 2023 could be a great swansong for such an under-rated career.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the possible options for the number four positions and have also shortlisted the picks – KL Rahul, Manish Pandey and Ambati Rayudu. With the IPL coming, the cricket season for the Indian team will start in no time and the next 18 months will be huge for some of the Indian batsmen.