Mohali: The short-pitched ball is one delivery that most Indian batsmen seem to have a problem with. Yusuf Pathan is the latest to be added to the list. After his blitzkrieg century off 37 balls for Rajasthan Royals against Mumbai Indians, Pathan has only managed scores of 0 (5), 26 (24), 15 (14) and 28 (19) to collect another 69 runs in four matches at a strike-rate of 111. 29 - much lower than his overall IPL strike-rate of 159.15.
His weakness against the rising delivery has been exploited to the hilt by some accurate bodyline bowling. A Hawk-Eye Pitch Map shows that in the match against Kings XI Punjab, the KXIP opposing bowlers did not give him any full-pitched ball to free his arms. Instead, Pathan was peppered by a few short-pitched balls from which he could get just one boundary.
In the match against RCB, too, a bowler of Vinay Kumar’s pace was troubling him with short deliveries. Shane Warne had earlier said that Pathan had been practicing batting against the quickies but it seems he is yet to master them.
The Hawk-Eye Beehive shows that most balls were aimed at his body to cramp him up. Balls in this area produced dots while balls on the off-side were put away for ones and twos.
In a tournament such as IPL 2010 - where everyone is on the lookout to find an opponent’s weak spot and attack it right away - Pathan is one of its earliest victims and unless he finds a way to play the short ball very soon we might not get to see a repeat of his early exploits.
For the benefit of his fans and for the Rajasthan Royals, Yusuf Pathan will need to come up with a plan of his own to combat the bowlers.
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