At the end of last night’s match between the Brisbane Heat and the Sydney Thunder, man-of-the-match Chris Lynn said “I knew they had to bring quicks back at the end so I had to be patient against the spin in the middle”.
This confirms what we have said before about Lynn’s batting. Firstly, he is a much stronger player with the ball coming onto the bat at pace. Secondly, and more importantly, he is aware of his weaknesses and will therefore play the waiting game until his opportunity arises.
A quick look at Lynn’s career T20 stats (charts below) and it could not be more clear how he thrives on pace bowling.
Lynn scores 135.2 runs per 120 balls (20 overs) faced from spin and 202.9 runs per 120 balls faced from non-spin bowling.
His Contribution Score (CS) per ball against spin is -0.030, indicating he plays spin worse than the average player given the match situations at which he contributes. However his CS against non-spin bowling is a phenomenal 0.691 runs per ball better than average.
Last night’s innings was completely in line with Lynn’s historical stats, only last night the situation dictated that he had to be even more dominant against the quicks. Which of course, he was – see charts below for stats on his match winning innings last night.
What could the Sydney Thunder have done differently last night to keep Lynn out of his comfort zone? Apart from holding on to a few more catches the simple answer is not much.
The Thunder went into last night’s match with just two recognized spinners in their line-up (Ahmed and Green), who historically had contributed a total of just 6 overs per innings to their team’s bowling quota. Lynn knew quite rightly that his chance against the quicks had to come.
Could the Thunder have selected a bowling line-up more heavily spin dependent? Again the answer is not really. The entire Thunder squad includes only 3 spinners who have bowled in a T20 match before, the third spinner being Nair who bowled one over in his debut match just a week ago. Compare this to the Melbourne Renegades or the Sydney Sixers who are each capable of fielding a team of 4 experienced spinners that historically have contributed 12 overs per match of spin, double that of the Thunder’s capability.
So would it make sense for teams facing the Heat in future to field a spin-heavy bowling line-up to counter Lynn’s “weakness”? It might, but they should also take into consideration the other key batsmen in the Heat team. The following charts look at the career T20 performances of Peirson, McCullum and Lynn, the heart of the Heat’s batting, versus spin and non-spin.
Clearly the charts show a spin heavy attack would be the best way to counter the Heat’s danger batsmen.
And it is not just the Heat who are more comfortable scoring with the ball coming on to the bat. The charts below show batting performances of all batsmen against spin v non-spin in the history of BBL cricket.
But if spin is such a weapon, why is it that team’s rarely go for an all spin bowling attack?
Cricmetric found two instances where T20 teams had utilized almost an entirely spin bowling attack for the full opposition inning.
In the WT20 match between Australia and Pakistan in October 2012, Pakistan successfully defended a total of 149 by bowling 18 of their 20 overs using spin. Australia struggled so badly that they batted their full 20 overs scoring just 117/7.
In the 2014 IPL, Chennai almost defended a score of 138 against a powerful RCB batting line-up including Gayle, Kohli and De Villiers bowling 17.5 of 19.5 overs of spin. RCB got over the line 5 wickets down and with just one ball in hand.
To summarize, Lynn’s innings last night was out of this world but it was against one of the few opposition bowling attacks in the league that lacked the variety to counter it. Had the Thunder’s squad contained more spin options and if their management was on the ball, they could have selected a team to challenge Lynn more.
How long will it be until teams consistently pick spin heavy attacks as weapons to exploit opposing teams’ weakness?