Why are the South Africa batsmen struggling against the Indian wrist spinners?

India leg-spinning duo of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav has taken a total of 13 wickets together in the two games of the ongoing ODI series against South Africa at an average of 9.31 and while it speaks volumes of their potential, it also testifies the fact that the South Africans have been piss poor with their game-plan and execution while facing them.

Apart from the regular skipper Faf du Plessis who scored a hundred in the first game in Durban, there hasn’t been a single Proteas batsman who has looked comfortable against Chahal and Kuldeep. In this article, we take a look at what the India wrist spinners have done well and how the South African batsmen have gone about tackling it thus far.

Not picking them out of the hand

One of the best features of wrist spin is that it enables the bowler to spin the ball both ways and the advisable way to pick which way a wrist spinner is spinning the ball is to keep a close look at his hands.  When a wrist spinner delivers his stock ball which is the leg spin, the front part of his hands will be facing the batsman at the point of the delivery, while in case of a googly, which is the wrong’un and happens to turn the other way around, the back of the bowler’s hand will be facing the batsman.

If you pick both these variations straight out of the hands of the bowler, your footwork is assured and you are not reluctant to go forward, but if you are unable to do that, you are in trouble and you will either look to sweep or go onto the back foot and try and read the spin of the surface which is what the South Africa batsmen have been doing in the past two games and as a result, have been getting lured into false strokes.

Very important to use the feet wisely

The general opinion of the experts after the 2nd ODI was that the South Africa batsmen should use their feet against the wrist spinners of India. While that is not a bad way to play spin, it’s also a pretty risky method if one has no idea which direction the ball will go. If you reach the pitch of the ball every time, you can nullify the spin, but if the bowler is clever enough to anticipate your movement and manipulate his length, you are a dead duck because you are coming out of your crease with no certainty whatsoever and your only chance of negotiating the delivery is by getting right to its pitch. If you fail, it will be almost impossible to hit the ball on the rise thereafter.

The South Africa batsmen are traditionally not the greatest users of the feet barring an exception or two. They like playing the spinners from the crease going forward or back as per the length of the ball and that mostly works against finger spin on non-turners where they can almost play the finger spinners as the medium pacers assuming the ball will come in with the angle most of the time, but it isn’t an appropriate ploy against wrist spin simply because of the reluctance in footwork caused by the mystery attached to the direction the ball will follow after pitching.

To back those batsmen who are not quite used to playing the spinners out of their crease to start stepping out all of a sudden and to reach the pitch of the delivery every time is unrealistic. And they obviously can’t continue with their current strategy of sweeping and guessing the direction of the ball off the surface from the back foot because that has neither worked so far nor will it ever work.

Watch their wrists closely

The only sure shot formula of success they can think of or one can advise them against the world-class wrist spin duo is to pick them out of the hands. It’s definitely not as easy as it sounds because the change in the position of the wrist is so subtle that you have to have the eye of a hawk to pick it on a consistent basis. But it’s something which the South Africa batsmen will have to somehow try and do, otherwise, their misery is not going to end anytime soon with 7 games still remaining in the limited-overs leg of the tour.

Disclaimer: The article is the opinion of the author and does not reflect on Crictracker as an entity