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Opinion
AB de Villiers is a genius. At the age of 37, he is proving that he still has a lot to give to cricket.
The more time you spend on the Chennai pitch, the harder the game becomes. Spinners get extra turns and bounces if the dew doesn’t have much effect.
Some 53.93 per cent of the wickets fell in the last five overs. At that time, Mumbai’s run rate was the highest last year.
This time their run rate is only 7.87. Apart from Bangalore, Hyderabad has the highest run rate of 8.59 among the other three teams playing in Chennai.
With the help of AB de Villiers, Bangalore’s run rate was 11.33 in that phase of the match.
Kolkata’s strike rate during the last five overs was 107.69. Mumbai is also close, with a strike rate of 118.68. Except for Bangalore, Hyderabad is the highest among the other three teams at 136.36.
Why is Bangalore different? Because there is De Villiers. That is why they are far beyond the other teams.
At that time, the strike rate of Bangalore was 181.11. Well, statistics show that De Villiers is above all teams.
In death overs, only ‘Mr 360 degrees’ has a strike rate above two hundred, 247.5.
Those last overs are only death overs for those who have to bowl in front of De Villiers.
(Photo by Gareth Copley-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)
The way the game is taking shape day by day, the batsmen do not seem to have much trouble hitting the boundaries. But the opposite happened at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. It has become very difficult to cross the rope here. That’s for the rest, not for De Villiers.
De Villiers hits one boundary every 3.7 balls. De Villiers, who scored 125 off 64 balls, came up with 65.6 per cent of his runs from sixes and fours. He hit one boundary off every 2.5 balls between the 16th and the 20th over.
In the last five overs, Hyderabad and Kolkata have 11 boundaries, while Mumbai has three more. De Villiers has two more than Mumbai.
Sixteen of Bangalore’s 24 boundaries came from the bat of their savior AB de Villiers. The man is getting bigger than the team again. The statistics say so.
In terms of sixes, he is a little behind Hyderabad. De Villiers hits five sixes in the death overs. Hyderabad hits six. However, Kolkata and Mumbai are behind him with four and three sixes respectively.
Where the rest are struggling to hit sixes and fours, he is hitting them effortlessly. In Chennai, the wickets that fall in the second half of the innings are almost three times as many as in the first half.
Except for Bangalore, the difference between the first-half run rate of the other three teams and the run rate in the second half is very small. About 71 per cent of the wickets have been lost in the last ten overs. It seems batting has become very difficult towards the end.
In the last five overs, among batsmen who have faced ten or more balls, only three out of them have crossed the strike rate of 150. De Villiers has a strike rate 77.5 more than Rashid Khan, who is in second place on that list with 17 runs off ten balls.
De Villiers has almost twice the runs and strike rate of both Andre Russell and Kieron Pollard. Pollard, the second highest scorer in that phase, scored 45 runs with a strike rate of 128.57. Andre Russell made 44 off 40 balls. Shakib Al Hasan has the lowest strike rate on the list, 53.85. His only partner with a strike rate below 100 is Ishan Kishan from Mumbai.
De Villiers’ 125 off 64 balls was all in the last ten overs, and 79 per cent of it was in the last five overs. That means De Villiers flew in the most difficult time.
Now he is in Mumbai. Wankhede’s pitch will not be as difficult for batsmen as Chennai’s. The storm has not started yet.
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