Lungi Ngidi didn’t have anything to show in his wicket columns but his bowling figures of 4-0-15-0 that included ten dot balls proved to be crucial in choking the Indian batting line-up on Sunday.
The Protea pacer used slower balls to effective use and restricted the hard-hitters such as Shivam Dube, Suryakumar Yadav, and Abhishek Sharma.
Him becoming a master of slow balls came from practice nets in the Indian Premier League (IPL). He spent hours observing and learning from Dwayne Bravo in the 2018 season of IPL as part of the Chennai Super Kings.
“Like I’ve always said, I was at the IPL in 2018 with Bravo, and that entire IPL, that’s all I worked on. I wasn’t playing, so I got time to practice it. And then when I got back to South Africa, I just tried to perfect that ball,” Ngidi said about his decisive weapon in the T20s.
Against India, He repeatedly mixed and matched between wide yorkers. One of the best T20 batters, Suryakumar found it difficult to read him with Ngidi mixing the variations with his change ups.
He admitted that mastering the art of change-ups was a gradual process. “Whether it’s a slow ball yorker, or back of length or slow ball bouncer. So three different lengths with the same ball. I guess you’ve got to guess which one’s coming next,” he said.
With Kagiso Rabada being the leader of attack and Marco Jansen being the other bowler, oppositions often not look at Ngidi as the primary threat. He finds it helpful to fly under the radar.
“I think probably just flying under the radar. So not many people pay attention to me. But I guess that helps me in terms of being able to us all these variations,” he said.
Explaining his approach against India, he said, “And then tonight, I used my leg cutter because I know that they’re obviously probably preparing for just an off-cutter. I could see Surya set up as well, looking to sort of just lift it over the leg side. So just to show him something different, keep him guessing. And that seemed to work pretty well.”
On a black soil pitch where the ball was holding up, Ngidi said that slower ball tilted the balance in his favour.
“I think having my slower ball gives me the upper hand in terms of batsmen can’t just swing every ball. We’ve seen that a bit in the power play. So once you have to think, I think that’s where I come into the game.”
With eight wickets in four games with an economy of just 6.62, Ngidi has proved to be the silent weapon South Africa has been using throughout the tournament.