Amit Mishra made the following comment after the qualifying match of Sunrisers Hyderabad against Faisalabad Wolves in the ongoing Champions League T20:
“I have always believed that since a legspinner has more variations, it is tougher for a left-hander to play him …”
This is certainly an interesting comment, coming from a leg spinner himself. I decided to check this claim of his: do left-handed batsmen indeed find it tough to play against leg spinners?
Last year, we had shown the existence of a “platoon” split for spinners: batsmen usually tend to perform worst against spinners of opposite handedness, at least in Test Cricket. So one would expect that leg spinners (who are also right-handed bowlers) will show a similar pattern, and therefore will have better statistics against left-handed batsmen than right-handed batsmen.
However, it turns out that this is not really the case. The table below shows the bowling average split for leg spinners against left/right handed batsmen in four formats of the game since 2008.
| Format | Average against lefty | Average against righty |
|---|---|---|
| Test | 49.6 | 45.8 |
| ODI | 38.5 | 29.6 |
| T20I | 29.2 | 20.7 |
| TWENTY20 | 29.4 | 23.9 |
This indicates that leg spinners actually perform slightly worse against left-handed batsmen as compared to right-handed batsmen, and this is consistent across the different formats of the game.
Maybe Mishra was not talking about leg spinners in general, but about his own bowling performance? Let us look at the career bowling average split for Amit Mishra against left/right handed batsmen.
| Format | Average against lefty | Average against righty |
|---|---|---|
| Test | 41.2 | 43.1 |
| ODI | 18.0 | 21.1 |
| T20I | 21.0 | - |
| TWENTY20 | 21.8 | 19.8 |
Mishra’s own splits are slightly better against left-handed batsmen, which I guess is the point he was trying to make in his post-match interview: that he can bowl as well against lefties as he can against righties. So while his claim about leg-spinners being better against lefties in general is not true, it is at least marginally true in his own case.