If you put a blindfold on Prasidh Krishna, place him at the top of his mark and told him to run in, he would bowl back of a length delivery just outside off-stump.
Every bowler has a place where they deliver. It takes years to find, and then is almost impossible to change. Your body works into a rhythm, and that is your spot.
But how often you can bowl it in T20 depends on how much it works. There is no point having a stock ball in this format unless no one can hit it. And in the case of Prasidh last year, it worked 25 times. Enough for him to get the most wickets.
What is incredible is how much he could just bowl his best ball over after over, and just pull it off. That kind of year is huge for a bowler. Because he didn’t need yorkers, or to bowl wide. He was almost indifferent to the stumps, and only bowled length occasionally.
Where Prasidh landed the ball was his zone, and he dominated with it.
Against the right-handers, we can see that outside the odd length ball coming back into the stumps, he hovered almost exclusively in his zone, peppering it and making you handle that delivery.
For the lefties he looked at the same spot, but added a ball at the top of off stump as well.
He was good against normal handed batters, averaging 24. Versus the southpaws, he dropped that to 12. None of them could stay in against him. They also barely scored at more than a run-a-ball.
He was a southpaw slayer.
This season, those same goofy-footed batters are scoring five more runs an over against him. And their average has gone from 12 to 66.
That’s a change.
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