Shami to Stokes: What Really Happened

Mohammed Shami bowled 10 balls to Ben Stokes in the IND v ENG fixture on October 26. It was an encounter which merited its own excellent review on ESPNCricinfo. I sought out the ball-tracking record from those 10 deliveries. It appeared on the live broadcast that the ball which eventually dismissed Stokes kept low. They showed the collection of deliveries on the broadcast which I saved at the time. Stokes took a chance (as opposed to playing it on the merits) and was bowled.

Derek Pringle, the former ENG player thought that “the ball was straight”. Pringle is representative of the significant set of ex-players who are suspicious of what he calls “obsession with data”.

Another set of observers think that Shami set Stokes up. This notion of a setup is a peculiar observers fallacy in which the idea is that the bowler produces a sequence of deliveries of which the last one is designed to produce the dismissal. This, readers will note, is different from a bowler delivering a sequence of good balls, each of which tests the batter, draws false shots, until, some of the time, the last one produces a dismissal (at other times, the last one either ends the over, or produces a run and a change of strike).

This setup idea is taken up by a number of numerate cricket observers who put great stock in the idea of contingency. For them, the probability of a dismissal on the delivery which did produce the dismissal is predictably higher than it is on previous (or other) deliveries because the outcome of that delivery is measurably contingent on the sequence of deliveries which preceded it. This view creates the possibility that the bowler’s ability to deliver that last delivery perfectly is especially important, making that one delivery more competitively significant than others.

Both the innumerate ex-players who are suspicious of data and these contingency obsessives make the same category error - they think a game is a story. The distinction is evident in this old observation by the cricket writer Karthik Krishnaswamy. He observes (readers can follow the whole thread) that “it was a series of good balls, any of which could have got a wicket had the batter not offered an adequate response. There was no set up”. That’s what a game is - a series of encounters, not a story in a sequence of scenes. In a game, unlike in a play, it is not considered a foul if the proverbial gun is shown hanging on the wall in the first scene, and it does not get fired by the third scene. The whole point of a game is that such patterns cannot be designed and need not exist.

So, on to Shami v Stokes. The ball was moving off the pitch that day for all seam bowlers. Chris Woakes and David Willey got it to move when England bowled, and the Indian bowlers did it too. Shami’s general approach when he bowls is to keep a good length which is not quite a driving length and not quite a cutting length on most pitches (the ball pitches at about 8 metres from the stumps), and then occasionally slip in the full ball which targets the stumps in the hope of late movement. In conditions where the ball is seaming off the pitch, this is an effective method, especially given Shami’s speed and supreme seam presentation.

The first 8 balls were all in that 8-9m range, and all of them passed the wickets above the height of the stumps. All of them were outside off stump, with the exception of the last ball of the 6th over which was straighter. Shami was getting the ball to swing in to Stokes (an outswinger for the right-hander) about 1 degree, and then the ball seamed anywhere from 0.6 to 2 degree either way. As movement goes, it was substantial. Stokes could easily have edged any of these balls, and indeed, he played and missed a few.

Shami’s 9th ball to Stokes - the fifth ball of the 8th over (the previous four had been dots, each swinging and seaming appreciably) - was on a fuller 5.2m length (about 17 1/2 ft from the stumps, as opposed to his usual 25 ft or 8m length). This one swung a bit more - 1.2 degrees into Stokes and then straightened just a little 0.36 degrees in the other direction. Stokes played it to mid-on. The ball would have hit the stumps about 53 cms above the ground (or about 2/3rd of the way up). This ball was fuller, so it passed the stumps below stump height as opposed to all of Shami’s previous deliveries to Stokes that day which would all have passed above stump height according to ball tracking data.

The 10th ball was pitched shorter than the 9th - on a 7.1m length (22 ft). This 10th ball would have passed the stumps at a height of 48cm above the ground. It kept appreciably low. The ball, sadly for Derek Pringle, was not “a straight ball” either. It swung in (to the lefty Stokes) 0.88 degrees and then further seamed in 0.36 degrees.

Had Stokes played normally - forward, he would probably have been LBW. The 7.1m length should have passed the stumps at about 75 centimetres about the ground - it should have hit the stop of the stumps. Combined with the inward movement, the pace and the ball keeping low, it is very very very likely that Stokes’ (or any batter’s) forward stroke would have been beaten.

It was just a lot of bad luck in a situation where the ball was doing a bit, the bowler was bowling very well, and the batter didn’t have any good options. Stokes has been in these situations before, as has every other batter with any experience in the international game, especially in this era.

It is one thing for the ball to move. It is another to encounter a bowler who can make the ball talk in those conditions. Of Shami’s 10 balls, only two would have hit the stumps (8.5 and 8.6). Stokes probably would not have missed 8.6 entirely if it had not kept low. It did, and it bowled him.

When an accurate bowler is able to extract movement from the pitch at high pace and with great control of length, it is a reasonable idea for a batter to chance his arm, especially when the batter has the ability which the English top order possess. Stokes didn’t play a bad shot. He was done by one which kept low. He attempted an attacking shot in an effort to force Shami to do try something different. Against an attack like IND, where “wait for the easy bowlers” is a non-starter as a strategy (there aren’t any easy bowlers), Stokes had the right idea.