INDIA TOUR OF SOUTH AFRICA, 2018

India, South Africa and the proximity to 'Morgan model'

by Kaushik Rangarajan • Last updated on

India's ODI approach is built on strong principles that has Rohit and Dhawan score an average of 48 in the first 10 overs © Getty

Something strange happened in March 2015 after Rubel Hossain bowled successive near-yorkers to knock England out of the 2015 World Cup. Eoin Morgan, the 11th hour captain for that tournament, was disconsolate. But England's then head coach Peter Moores lightened the mood with easily the most exciting phrase involving the word 'data'.

England had said, before departure, that they would have had to endure an "absolute stinker" to not make the World Cup quarter final. And a stinker it was. Their top score in the tournament was 309. Australia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, West Indies, Pakistan, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Ireland, Zimbabwe and Scotland all scored higher than that at least once. Australia did it four times.

One of only three teams, besides UAE and Afghanistan, to not outdo England's measly effort were defending champions and eventual semifinalists India. But MS Dhoni's side crawled past the 300-mark thrice - against Pakistan, South Africa and in the Bangladesh quarterfinal - and won comfortably each time while England's supposedly best batting effort earned them a nine-wicket defeat to Sri Lanka.

Two months later, news filtered through that Moores was sacked by the new ECB administration under director Andrew Strauss. The manner of his exit was a public relations disaster for the board with the drawn Tests against Windies cited as reason. But somebody out there was still looking at the data. In the first series after his exit, England went toe-to-toe with Brendon McCullum's New Zealand side and posted scores of 408, 365, 302, 350, and 192 (in 25 overs). 'New England' was born, a side whose unbridled batting fury would make an Australian captain (Steven Smith) concede that they'd set a new batting bar for 50-over cricket.

The 50-over cricket's relatively short history is replete with disruptive changes that have proven to be ground breaking. Be it the West Indies's early bucaneering ways, Australia's running between the wickets in the late 80s, Pakistan's bowling in the early 90s, Sri Lanka's starts in the late 90s or India's middle-overs spin choke in the 2010s, teams have changed how a vital part of the game was being played. The second half of the 2010s, the one with all the fielding and ball rule changes, could belong to England's free bird approach to batting.

In the three years since that World Cup debacle, England have gone past the 300-run mark a staggering 26 times and past 350, nine times. It starts with a hyper-aggressive start at the top and continues all the way down to No.7. "It just looks like the way they play is for everyone to go really hard and Joe Root is sort of the rock in the middle. He just plays good cricket and guys bat around him," was Smith's deconstruction of England's method. Smith also highlighted that the approach was fraught with high risks in a big tournament scenario, as was evident in the Champions Trophy semifinal against Pakistan when they collapsed to a low total and lost.

"This time next year we need to be in a good enough space to be contenders for the World Cup," Morgan said, explaining his team's madness. "To be in that space you need to be setting or bucking trends or being able to adapt. We are very open-minded with the way we are going. Also the best way to address it is to be on the front foot."

Batting Statistics post World Cup 2015

Team Innings Avg (1-6) SR (1-6) Balls/Boundary 300+ totals 350+ totals England 57 45.06 98.94 8.74 26 9 India 53 49.37 92.07 9.62 15 4 New Zealand 57 40.15 89.96 9.82 10 1 Sri Lanka 62 34.24 83.36 11.18 11 2 Australia 54 38.71 91.52 9.84 13 4 South Africa 47 46.06 94.82 9.54 15 8 Pakistan 52 39.41 86.31 10.94 9 1 Zimbabwe 52 28.76 74.31 13.09 4 0 Bangladesh 39 36.85 84.38 10.07 5 0 West Indies 36 26.91 76.5 12.38 3 1 Ireland 33 30.67 77.93 11.19 3 0 Afghanistan 34 25.04 70.38 13.96 1 0

But neither trendsetters England nor World Champions Australia have enjoyed the kind of consistency in ODI success as the top-two ranked teams, South Africa and India, have in recent times. In a different part of the Southern Hemisphere, as the two sides begin their preparations for the final stretch before the World Cup, at a time when there is still time to tune approaches to their ODI game, there is a palpable sense of anticipation to watch if either of these two teams could be swayed by the England mania.

South Africa look most close to following the 'Morgan model', one that seems more obvious given head coach Ottis Gibson's recent background in the England think-tank. With Quinton de Kock, AB de Villiers, JP Duminy, David Miller and Chris Morris on board, they have the firepower to mirror England with Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis playing what Smith calls the 'rock in the middle' role. The two 'rocks' offer extra insurance against the sort of collapse Smith so deviously believes could be England's undoing.

The numbers offer greater validation to South Africa's proximity to England in this period since the last World Cup. If 350 is the new 300, then South Africa have eight such scores to England's nine in this period. The average strike-rate for batsmen from Nos 1 to 6 of 94.82 is second-best after England's 98.94. Duminy, one of the integral members of that middle-order, put it down to understanding the make of the side.

South Africa have eight 350-plus ODI totals since the 2015 World Cup, second only to England, who have nine ©

"I think it's the make up of your team. If you look back to a team like England, who bats quite deep - they probably bat until 10 or 11 at times," he said. "For our team, it's about understanding what's the make up and how do we best get to a 300-past score. But these days, even 300 is not good enough. Even 350, you're still not guaranteed a win. So, it's understanding what's the make-up, what each player's role is and understanding how to go about that role. There's going to be a lot of shifting I would think leading up to the World Cup so guys will want to understand their role, understand their game and understand what brand of cricket we want to play going into 2019. It's going to be an intriguing phase not only for our team but for all teams."

India, on the other hand, are not buying into the hype. They have built a strong ODI CV playing the averages game as opposed to be drawn into the strike-rate situation. India's average of 49.37 for the top-six is the best but they have only Kedar Jadhav and Hardik Pandya striking at over 100 in this period. In contrast, England have seven players scoring at a rate in excess of 100 while South Africa have five.

Kohli's team, and Dhoni's before him, have been content getting to scores between 300 to 320 while batting first and then apply scoreboard pressure to take down opponents. It's built on strong principles that has Rohit and Dhawan score an average of 48 in the first 10 overs and gradually help setup a base by the 40th over for the lower-order to eventually teeoff. It's a risk-free theory except that on good batting tracks (which are now everywhere) it bridges the gap down to even lowly teams such as Sri Lanka, who showed that in the Champions Trophy, when they chased down 321 without much fuss. India scored 300-plus totals in Perth and Brisbane and made 295 in Melbourne - all in a span of five days, and lost each time.

You would assume that with a top-three of Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, India would have breached 350 mark more than the four times they've managed in this period. But they don't set themselves up for it and risk getting a sub-300 score. But Kohli is okay with the safety-first approach.

"Look we as a side have always done well in the shorter formats, so we didn't necessarily need to change the way things work for us," Kohli said. "What works for one team doesn't necessarily work for another. So yeah, I mean England plays a certain brand of cricket and so does Australia. India plays in a very different way, but anything is effective. No one technique is perfect in cricket and no one way of playing is perfect in any format. So you can win with your style of play as long as you are convinced about it and you believe in it. I think that's the thing that matters the most.

"Different styles should not be copied, that's what I feel personally. From batsman to batsman and team to team, and bowler to bowler as well. If someone tries to bowl like Jasprit [Bumrah] right now they'll mess up their bowling - it's very similar. We don't want to hamper the balance of our team.

Obviously the areas you need improvement you keep improving them on the sidelines and keep moving forward. But the core style of play of the team should always be there. We should know as batsmen, who is going to do what. If there is a factor of unpredictability then the team feels very unbalanced, and you know there's not enough confidence around. We're pretty happy with the way we play," he added.

Neither method of pacing a 50-over innings is without its own set of pros and cons. A six-match series on what are generally expected to be good batting wickets and quality attacks, there will come moments when teams will have to choose between adventurism and mild conservatism in their approach. And given that these are two pre-eminent one-day sides going around, one way or the other, there'll be some more clarity if England's gung-ho methods of ODI batting have had far-n reaching consequences to the evolution of the modern ODI game.

© Cricbuzz

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