Sunil Narine has been playing for Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League for a decade. Through this period, his bowling action has been called suspect many times and it has undergone as many tweaks as his funky hairdos. Reported for a suspect action in IPL two years ago and having had to miss four matches, he made further corrections and even began wearing half sleeves, perhaps to make the point that he had nothing to hide about his elbow flex.
During these setbacks, questions were routinely raised about the Trinidad spinner’s future in the game. Will he get back to being the bowler he was? Will he be able to impact games like he did, or will he fade into oblivion?
Such skepticism can drag down anyone, but not Narine, who has showed the kind of steel that reveals itself when he occasionally turns top-order batting enforcer.
This season, KKR have struggled to find a winning combination, though Narine has stood out despite negligible support for the 2021 IPL runners-up. The 33-year-old’s latest effort came on Saturday, 1/20 in four overs, and stood as a great act of defiance while the twice IPL champions suffered a 75-run defeat by Lucknow Super Giants. No other KKR bowler went for less than seven runs per over.
He came on to bowl the fourth over on Saturday, conceding a six to Deepak Hooda off his third ball in a 10-run opening over. But he gave just 10 runs in his next three. His dismissal of LSG opener Quinton de Kock—he had bludgeoned a fifty off 27 balls—particularly revealed Narine’s craft. The South African batter seemed in a hurry to dispatch almost every ball out of sight, but the spinner bowled shorter and wide of off-stump to prevent de Kock from targetting his hitting arc on the leg side. The result was his holing out to long-off.
Though Hooda, Krunal Pandya and Marcus Stoinis can go all-out in attack against spin, they were happy to play out Narine’s remaining overs. Lucknow’s approach reflected the method most teams use against Narine. That explains why Narine has taken just eight wickets in 11 matches this season, at an economy rate of 5.22, the best this IPL season.
Narine’s longevity can be appreciated – he has played 145 IPL matches for KKR– when one looks at the short-lived successes of other mystery spinners. Be it Sri Lanka’s Ajantha Mendis, KKR’s Varun Chakravarthy or KC Cariappa, the effectiveness dipped once the batters got used to the variations.
Chakravarthy’s career is at the crossroads. He took 17 wickets in 2020 and 18 last year, but the 30-year-old from Tamil Nadu hasn’t been able to sustain those standards. His shrinking returns—four wickets in eight games at an economy of 8.82—led to KKR dropping him this season.
He only needs to look at Narine for inspiration, how the Trinidadian has reinvented himself time and again. After his meteoric initial success in IPL—he took 24, 22 and 21 wickets in his first three seasons—the threat of his action being called illegal began chipping away at his confidence. Remodelling his action many times would have brought many doubts. Especially after his off-break stopped turning as devilishly as it once did and his carrom ball stopped being a clandestine weapon.
Numbers tell the story. He took only 28 wickets from 2015 to 2017 at an economy much higher than earlier. While 2018 was more encouraging with 17 scalps in 16 games, he again saw a dip with just 10 wickets in 2019 and five in 2020. The below-par performance in 2020 was perhaps due to Narine getting used to his latest action. By the time IPL 2021 arrived, everything was in sync, enabling him to take 16 wickets in the run up to the final.
KKR also deserve credit for sticking with Narine through thick and thin. For a few seasons, it was Narine’s ability to play the big shots at the top of the order as much as his bowling that kept him in the eleven. KKR could easily have moved on from Narine, but didn’t. Even when Chakravarthy began making an impact, they made sure both worked in tandem than discard Narine.
If Chakravarthy quickly regains rhythm, it will benefit Narine a lot. Then batters won’t have the luxury of treading with caution against Narine, and it will open up his chances to claim a clutch of wickets and be the match-winner he has been.
