Australia: a spinner’s paradise?
Data from this World Cup seems to lend weight to that unlikely notion
While pacers have dominated in terms of wickets across locations in this World Cup, spinners have had more success in Australia than New Zealand. An analysis of the fall of wickets for all games played so far shows that spinners manage to bamboozle batsmen much more in Australia.
As of Tuesday, 24 matches have been played in the World Cup with half each in Australia and New Zealand. Overall, the wicket share of spinners and seamers has remained the same across both countries—around 75% of the wickets have come from seamers, not counting run-outs, hit-wickets and batsmen retired hurt.
The wickets taken by seamers, in contrast, have followed the same pattern across both countries. Catches remain the overwhelmingly most common mode of dismissal, accounting for around 75% of the dismissals by seamers, followed by bowleds and LBWs.
So far, all of India’s matches have been in Australia, and the spinners have increasingly shown that they enjoy bowling there. From taking 1 wicket against Pakistan, the spinners went on to take 3 wickets against South Africa and 6 wickets against the UAE. India will play West Indies in Perth on Friday; hopefully the spinners will maintain their increasing wicket-taking streak. The numbers show they should.
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