Sliders and wrong’un: How Ravi Bishnoi is fighting for a spot in India’s T20 World Cup team | Cricket News

Ravi Bishnoi had just seen a 98.8 kmph full-length ball slog-swept for a six Travis Head in the final T20 game. Next ball, he ratcheted the pace even further, going beyond the 100 mark and flung in his quick-arm slider off a good length on the middle-stump line. The left-handed Head arrested his tiny forward-step, pressed back, and had a defensive waft at it. But there was no time for jail-break; it all happened in a flash. The led lights lit up as the bails flew, beaten the pace and the slider that had the ball crashing onto the off stump.Bishnoi doesn’t deal in surprises, but does the job repetition. It was his trademark delivery – the flat, skidding, tilting into the right-handers at some pace, and it has repeatedly done the job for him in the limited-over series against Australia.
The former India leg-spinner Laxman Sivaramakrishnan explains the efficacy of Bishnoi. “With his (Bishnoi) action, where the ball is released from behind his head, he won’t get turn,” he tells The Indian Express. “He will be mostly bowling the ones that will slide. Even with the googlies, he won’t get much turn, it will just come in with the angle. It is his natural angle that is very effective. If a normal leg-spinner bowls, the ball will grip on the surface and turn. But with Bishnoi, because of the angle and trajectory, it will just skid on after pitching, giving very little time for batsmen,” Sivaramakrishnan says.

For his impeccable bowling performance and claiming 9 wickets in 5 matches, Ravi Bishnoi is the Player of the Series 👏👏#TeamIndia | #INDvAUS | @IDFCFIRSTBank pic.twitter.com/Hlym60jHd4
— BCCI (@BCCI) December 3, 2023
In a T20 series where there was little to take home apart from the academic interest, India’s already crowded spin bowling resources, now certainly has another companion in Bishnoi.
With Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal in the mix, Bishnoi is no longer a luxury now. The 23-year-old leg-spinner, the least conventionally skilful of the lot, is an utterly T20 specimen. His trajectory is flat, is quicker than the rest, his leg-spin seldom turns, his googly just comes in with the angle. He doesn’t bother about those jazzy sentiments about flight and dipping from above the eye-lines of batsmen.
In a series where Bishnoi repeatedly breached the defence of the batsmen, what stood out the most was how repeatedly he had them playing from the crease, which led to the dismissals. Speaking on Jio Cinema on Sunday, Muttiah Muralitharan had special praise for him. “India have always had a good set of spinners in every generation. You see from Anil (Kumble) to (Ravi) Ashwin to now the young guys who have come. Bishnoi is different from any other leg spinner that is around. He bowls quicker and he makes the ball slide a lot,” Muralitharan said.
And as India are building a team with an eye on the T20 World Cup next June, there is a reason why the team management and the selectors are increasingly looking at Bishnoi, the least experienced of them all, especially when they have a much more accomplished leg-spinner in Chahal.
If Chahal broke away from the convention landing his leg-breaks away from the off-stump, making the batsmen reach out, and became successful, Bishoni is doing the same with his lengths. With a past-vertical action — a lot similar to how Pakan’s Mushtaq Ahmed used to bowl — where the ball is released from behind his head, rather than beside, Bishnoi’s biggest strength is his length. He doesn’t bowl full in the hope of deceiving the batsman with turn, flight or drift. Instead, he repeatedly lands them just around the good length area, and at some pace, leaving the batsmen second guessing whether to play him on the front-foot or back and end up being caught in the crease like a dead duck.
Yuzvendra Chahal appeals for a wicket. (Twitter/@yuzi_chahal)
For a spinner, who first caught the eye during the 2020 Under-19 World Cup in South Africa, Bishnoi is yet to evolve into an all-format bowler, having played only one first-class game so far. However, playing the shorter formats, especially T20s means, it has allowed him retain the originality. Those who have tracked him from Under-19 days to now, say he has remained the same spinner, who has enhanced his already exing skills to good effect. Among the Indian spinners in contention for the T20 World Cup, only Axar has a better T20 economy than Bishnoi’s 7.09.
That Sunil Narine excited him the most as a spinner in his growing-up years tells a thing or two about his making. According to those in the know, he seldom thinks in the manner conventional spinners do.
There is a bit of mystery that exs in him. And nothing illustrates it better than the reaction of batsmen after losing the stump to him. It was this reason that Lucknow Super Giants, made him one of their three signings before their auction when they joined the IPL in 2022. Having watched him at close quarters, captain KL Rahul and their then coach Andy Flower, a widely travelled T20 coach, preferred having him in the ranks. Thanks to his trajectory, Bishnoi offers something that the rest of the spin bowling unit doesn’t offer.
He is capable of bowling during any phase of the innings, a luxury that very spinners provide in T20s. Among the current lot, barring Rashid Khan, most spinners don’t generally bowl in the death overs. And last IPL, especially during the slow turners at home, Rahul used him as an option in the end overs, especially while defending totals. Thanks to his lengths, most batsmen tend to target him in the arc between mid-on and mid-wicket, which in essence makes it easier for captains to set the field.
In the next six months, India will have to take a call on whom to take for the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean and US. For the leg-spinners slot, it will come down to Chahal vs Bishnoi, an old-school spinner vs one that has grown up in the era of T20s. The IPL could well become the stage for the cage fight between the two.