2022 Blackcaps Tracker: Santner & Sodhi (The Firm)
Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi are key figures for Aotearoa's T20I outfit, forming one of the best spin-tandems in world cricket. After playing in all T20I games of the Blackcaps European excursion, Santner and Sodhi continue their mahi in West Indies and have made low key improvements ahead of another T20 World Cup.
T20 World Cups provide a lovely place to start as Santner and Sodhi have been fantastic on the biggest T20 stage. Both have played 12 T20WC games with Santner taking 12w @ 21.91avg/6.54rpo and Sodhi snaring 19w @ 16.52avg/7.19rpo. This gets even more impressive as Sodhi's T20WC bowling strike-rate is ranked second for all bowlers; Sodhi is one of the most efficient T20WC bowlers ever.
There is evidence that Santner and Sodhi are getting better as well. To understand their development, it's important to understand their roles as Santner is generally the tidier, more economical bowler and Sodhi is a weapon. That's helped Northern Districts to multiple Super Smash championships and for whatever reason, these two have made steady progress during the pandemic.
Santner and Sodhi generally rolled out their best mahi at the 2016 T20WC. 2016 was Santner's most economical year of T20I bowling before drifting above 7.20rpo for each of the following four years. 2020 was Santner's most expensive year of T20I bowling and this led to Santner dipping below 7rpo for 2021 and now 2022.
2016: 6.23rpo.
2017: 7.20rpo.
2018: 8.23rpo.
2019: 7.33rpo.
2020: 8.73rpo.
2021: 6.56rpo.
2022: 6.83rpo.
The same trend is evident in Sodhi's mahi but for wicket-taking efficiency. This is where the vibe check of their bowling roles is reinforced with stats as Santner has maintained a better economy rate than Sodhi, while Sodhi's bowling strike-rates are consistently lower than Santner's. Sodhi hovered around his excellent 2016 T20WC mark before going over 20sr for a few years and while many other bowlers (Santner included) would love to sit around 20sr, Sodhi exists in a different realm of efficiency.
2016: 12.9sr.
2017: 12sr.
2018: 27sr.
2019: 20.9sr.
2020: 21.3sr.
2021: 12.4sr.
2022: 12.4sr.
This is the first pocket of Santner's career in which he's conceding less than 7rpo in consecutive years and the second pocket of Sodhi's career where he's operating below 13sr in consecutive years. The 2022 mahi is boosted by playing Ireland, Scotland and Netherlands which sets up intrigue as to how these two perform in the remaining games against West Indies, a T20I extravaganza in Aotearoa, then the World Cup.
Santner hit 4* @ 133.33sr and took 3w @ 4.75rpo in the first game vs West Indies, while Sodhi took 1w @ 8.50rpo. Funnily enough, Santner was the only bowler in that game who conceded less than 7rpo. Santner and Sodhi also have roles to play with the bat, which in T20I cricket is all about whacking boundaries or at least ticking the score along as fast as possible.
Santner has a T20I batting strike-rate of 129.47 and casually went up the order vs Netherlands, batting #3 and smacking 77* @ 183.33sr. As Jimmy Neesham went typically bonkers vs West Indies, Santner didn't hit a boundary but scored runs and ensured Neesham faced plenty of deliveries.
Sodhi operates at 112.63sr and has only batted 14 times in 74 games, sitting further down the order than Santner. The key nugget for Sodhi is that he has the same number of T20I sixes and fours (7). Sodhi's actually hit 7 sixes in Tests, ODIs and T20I cricket for some numerology alignment. So far in his career, Sodhi is equally as likely to hit a six as he is to hit a four and that seems like a decent recipe when batting down the order.
Aotearoa face West Indies again on Saturday morning, then the third T20I on Monday morning. They will have another dose of T20I back in Aotearoa before shifting to Australia where Santner and Sodhi have only played one T20I game, for the World Cup. This will be a key thread to track in the coming months and as they have already maintained excellence in a variety of conditions, they are well prepared for the upcoming flow of fixtures.
Join the Niche Cache Patreon whanau to support our kiwi sports content straight up, get a karma boost and find extra podcasts.
Every Monday and Friday we fire off an email with bonus content. Sign up here!
Peace and love.