Could Ish Sodhi be Aotearoa's greatest leg-spinner?

It's a rather dramatic response to Sodhi's impressive performance in the Big Bash League for Adelaide. In fact, everything from hailing Sodhi as a world-beating phenom to the predictable hype surrounding T20 cricket or more specifically kiwis and T20 cricket was fairly dramatic. Let's start with Stephen Fleming's comments before we get on to Sodhi.

For those who don't know, Fleming is now a cricket coach and general wheeler/dealer with heavy links into India. Fleming's coaching work comes in the T20 format though as he's the coach of Melbourne Stars and Rising Pune Supergiants in the IPL, essentially making Fleming a T20 cricket coach; so of course he's going to speak on such matters from a perspective that is heavily invested in T20 cricket. 

The idea of pumping up one format of cricket at the expense of another is a worrying trend in cricket and the cannibalistic nature of it is exactly what cricket doesn't need. T20, ODI and Test cricket are three formats that simply need to get along and in the case of Aotearoa and the BBL, this is more an issue of NZ Cricket inflating the profile of the Super Smash competition, instead of understanding what it is, in the big bad jungle of T20 cricket. 

I'm of the belief that instead of trying to get a kiwi team in the BBL, we need to first get as many kiwi lads playing in the BBL as possible and not just one or two game stints. That simply can't happen with the Super Smash scheduled as it is and instead of zoning in on the T20 vs country issue, perhaps we need to turn our focus to players choosing BBL over Super Smash. To some extent it's already happened with Brendon McCullum playing in the BBL with Brisbane Heat ... when he could have been playing for Otago and drawing in far bigger crowds for the Super Smash. As I said a few weeks ago: McCullum, Fleming, Daniel Vettori and Shane Bond have chosen BBL over Super Smash.

As long as the Super Smash takes place during the BBL, it's only a matter of time until kiwi T20 guns are given a choice. Perhaps they have already been given a choice but as the BBL climbs to greater heights every year and the Super Smash stutters, that decision gets a bit easier to make. 

For those who have followed Ish Sodhi's rise through kiwi cricket ranks, his 6/11 for Adelaide was nothing new. The variations and pure enthusiasm for cricket have been a staple of his work since he debuted for Papatoetoe's Premier team as a schoolboy, as he made every Auckland age-group team and then got a shot at First-Class cricket with Northern Districts. Vision of Sodhi skittling stumps or hitting a front pad with a wrong-un has been etched in the minds of observers for as long as Sodhi's been a prominent youngster in kiwi cricket. 

Also noteworthy is that everything was aligned for Sodhi to enjoy success in the BBL.

While batsmen would have had footage of Sodhi, very few would have faced him previously. Bigger Australian boundaries meant that shots which would have easily had gone for six in the Super Smash, fell to a fielder in the BBL. Hence why Sodhi had an unlucky Super Smash in which he took 4 wickets @ 50avg/7.40sr, with seven bowlers taking more wickets than Sodhi there ... Sodhi took more wickets in that 6/11 than he did during the entire Super Smash. 

Then there's also the fact that it's T20 cricket and this forces batsmen to attack. A natural reaction when a leggy comes on in any form of cricket is 'let's go to boomtown', then factor in the nature of T20 cricket and batsmen simply need to take risks against Sodhi in T20 cricket. 

It's one thing to take a risk against a leggy, it's another to take risks against a leggy who is close to 6ft and has every trick in the book. This is perhaps why Sodhi averages 14.47 in T20 internationals and 21.96 in domestic T20 games, while averaging 46.68 in Tests, 43.76 in ODIs, 41.75 in FC cricket and 32.21 in List-A cricket. Trying to whack Sodhi to the boundary in T20s usually means that you'll get out.

Leg-spinners are attacking, aggressive bowling options as it is and that fits in nicely with T20 cricket. There does appear to have been little faith shown in Sodhi in the longer formats though as he's been in and out of the Blackcaps Test/ODI team, making way for spinners who won't play a major role in the Blackcaps in the next five years (Jeetan Patel, Mark Craig and Todd Astle). This leads me to believe that Sodhi is very similar to Henry Nicholls in that their domestic long-form records aren't overly flash, but there's a high chance that they'll be very good Test players if they are given 20 Tests to find their feet at that level.

In T20 cricket, the pressure is on the batsman to hit boundaries. In four/five-day cricket, the pressure is on the bowler as the batsman doesn't have to take as many risks and can instead just wait for one bad ball an over - not try hit good deliveries to the boundary. This could be why Sodhi doesn't have a great record in the longer formats as he does drop short once an over for example, while Mitchell Santner can bowl much tighter, for longer.

That, my friends, is where I settle on an argument that I have been building over the last month or so: why not play Sodhi and Santner in the same Test team consistently? Granted, much of this depends on Santner scoring runs, but in Sodhi we have an attacking weapon and in Santner we have a pressure-builder. Sodhi's attacking intent means he struggles to dot 'em up, while Santner isn't going to win you a Test; it's a yin-yang thang.

Sodhi will now head into the Ford Trophy with ND and in List-A cricket he has a 32.21avg/4.92rpo record so whether he can build on the hype from his BBL efforts will be very interesting. As will his return to the Plunket Shield later in the summer where he's ranked below Todd Astle, Jeetan Patel, Ajaz Patel and Tarun Nethula in average/rpo.

The Blackcaps won't win Test matches and climb up the rankings with Santner and four kiwi medium pace bowlers in their team. Sodhi is an attacking weapon and with that comes a risk/reward equation - as we saw under Brendon McCullum's captaincy, kiwis need to take risks if they are to achieve. 

Right now however, we are dealing with a selection team which dropped Sodhi from the Blackcaps Test squad in India for the grizzly veteran Jeetan Patel. I assumed that Sodhi and Santner would have been given a full series to suss out their craft in spinning conditions, against the best players of spin in the world, because, well, what did the Blackcaps have to lose? 

With little long-term planning apparently in action, it's up to Sodhi to now go back to the Ford Torphy and Plunket Shield where he must dominate and demand selection. That's if he wants to, as there will always be a vulnerable T20 batsman trying to whack him for six.