Crumbling plans: how a fielding team’s arduous research of a top batsman can be their own undoing

Imposing: Sir Viv Richards was not a man you would look to ‘rough up’ at the crease (photo: Getty Images)

By Derek Pringle

Everybody has plans for you when you stand out as much as Virat Kohli does at the moment. It sounds grand, to have a plan, proactive even, but the best laid of them, and Brexit is set to be another, have a habit of falling apart despite their best intentions.

Kohli, the batsman, appears unstoppable at present, a swaggering colossus of self-belief and perfectly executed strokes. Clarity of thought is at the heart of such dominance and although his dismissal for 122 in Pune saw him caught in two minds after he miscued Ben Stokes to mid-off, there was no dithering when the hard yards had to be won.

With Kohli proving both provider and inspiration as India chased down 350 against England last Sunday, you felt a riposte from Eoin Morgan’s side was needed. Cue the old ‘get it up ‘em’ bouncer ploy, this time announced by Jake Ball, and a favourite of Ottis Gibson, England’s bowling coach. It could be a bluff, given the docile nature of India’s  pitches, but with Kohli falling cheaply to a ball of full length during the second ODI in Cuttack, it has yet to be tested.

There have always been opponents on whom more time in team meetings is spent deliberating on how to negate them. But the theory of how to do it differs vastly from the doing which assumes so many things, not least that your target lacks the wherewithal to react or change his behaviour.

Take Viv Richards, the batsman Kohli most resembles at present, not in the manner of his shots but in the bristling menace he exudes at the crease.

England’s plans for Viv were to either bounce him early on in his innings or bowl a foot wide of off-stump, the first to see if he could be taken by surprise, the second to frustrate him into playing a rash shot. Apart from their reasoning coming from different premises neither ploy really worked and he scored more runs, 2,869, at a higher average, 62.36, against England than any other team.

Another match involving Richards reveals the fallacy of most plans. Essex were playing Somerset at Taunton in 1985 and Keith Fletcher’s cunning ploy, as he sensed Richards did not look all that engaged, was “to not wake him up” when he came in to bat. What he meant by this was we were not to rouse Richards’ ire in any way by sledging him, staring at him or giving him any sense of grievance with which to motivate himself into playing a big innings. Trouble was, while most had got the message nobody seemed to have informed our young fast bowler, Ian Pont, given his big chance to impress after injury to John Lever.

Richards had scored a single when Pont tore in and bounced him, forcing Richards to lose his cap as he rapidly took evasive action. As Richards dusted his cap down, very deliberately, a knowing look passed between Essex’s senior players – an unspoken “what has he done now.

We weren’t kept waiting long for the answer as Richards smashed the next ball on the up one bounce to the cover boundary, where it struck the advertising boards with an ominous and resounding crack. If actions could speak as words then this said – “you’ve had your moment sonny, now I’m going to take you apart.”

Pont, though, had one more trick in his repertoire, a slower ball and he unleashed it next. It proved decisive too as Richards seemed intent on launching the next ball into the graveyard of St James’ Church beyond long-off, wherever it pitched. The change of pace, an uncommon ploy back then, meant Viv was through his shot too soon but not before it had feathered an edge to the wicket-keeper.

If Richards’ dismissal came about from the plan that wasn’t, then the one Essex had for Ian Botham that match, an in-out field to the spinners, didn’t work either. Botham made 153 though Essex, after rain disrupted most the second day, won the match by seven wickets. Aah, the perverse joys of declarations and three-day cricket.

Another plan, also for a batsman, has gone down in Essex folklore. In 1970, Geoff Boycott scored 260 against Essex at Colchester’s Garrison ground setting up an innings victory. Determined not to be humiliated again when the fixture returned to the ground the following year, Brian ‘Tonker’ Taylor, Essex’s captain, unveiled his masterplan for getting Boycott out cheaply.

This comprised giving Keith Boyce – Essex’s overseas fast bowler – the preceeding game off, so he was in peak condition to bowl at Boycott, then a compulsive hooker, the quickest bouncer he could summon, but only after he’d lulled him into a false sense of security with three gentle off-stump half-volleys. The leg-side field would then shift, surreptitiously, to be ready for the bouncer and the catch that would ensue.

The plan was triggered in the very first over. Three half volleys from Boyce which Boycott, as predicted, patted back, set the trap. Trouble was, Tonker, who also kept wicket, had turned to shout “Catch it” to his deep square leg the moment Boycott shaped to hook. But the bouncer was too quick and instead of hooking into the deep Boycott got a tiny glove on the shot, which hit Tonker flush on the chest before going to ground. Dropped on nought, Boycott went on to make 233, though the match was drawn.

For some bowlers, like Angus Fraser, there is only one plan worth considering: to hit the top of off-stump. As he told me in no uncertain terms: “That is hard enough to do without captains coming up with hare-brained ideas of doing x, y and z for one batsman and a, b and c for another”.

As Fraser points out, Glenn McGrath, Richard Hadlee, Curtly Ambrose and Shaun Pollock all looked to bowl the same ball (off-stump or just outside on a good length) 95 per cent of the time. But while that helps bowlers to excel in Tests, one-day cricket complicates matters because such repetition becomes very hittable. Even so, plans assume a level of control from the bowler that is just not there. If it was, then bad balls would not exist.

Actually, perhaps bad balls are the secret in white-ball cricket. Ravichandran Ashwin recently talked about constructing an over of them for T20 cricket though what he meant was that a bad ball in red-ball cricket can be a good one in white because with the field back, it tends to go for one run instead of four.

If England can manage that numerical trade-off then Kohli, who scored half his runs in Pune with boundaries, could well be tamed, at least for an innings or two.

*This article originally featured in The Cricket Paper on Friday, 20 January 2017.