Why is Arshdeep Singh judged so harshly? | Cricket News

Just 16 months into his international career, Arshdeep Singh has weathered numerous storms. He has been brutally criticized for his tendency to bleed runs—12 times in 40 games has he leaked 10 or more an over in a game; his overstepping woes were packaged as traffic rule memes; a dropped catch off Pakan batsman Asif Ali in a tense encounter in the 2022 Asia Cup spun vicious and sustained trolling. He did not sleep the night he spilled the catch that turned out to be game-defining, but every time he has been ridiculed or mocked, he has demonstrated an incredible gift to fight back, to survive and prosper.
In his span he had experienced enough of the fickle love of supporters that he once penned a poignantly philosophical poem in Punjabi, roughly translated as: “For some, I’m lucky, for some, it’s just a fluke. All they ignore is my hard work. All they talk about is fate and destiny. When time is good, anyone can succeed, but the character is tested when one overcomes tough times. Courageous individuals will not back down easily. And a character like me won’t lose hope in tough times.”
Indian bowler Arshdeep Singh celebrates the wicket of Australian batter Ben McDermott during the 5th T20I cricket match between India and Australia, at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, in Bengaluru. (PTI)
In his career, he has embodied these traits. For, every time he has been plundered for runs, or looked rusty, or blundered, he has found the wherewithal to fight back and deliver a match-winning performance. Weeks after the Dubai faux pas, he landed lusty blows to Pakan at the MCG in the World T20 in 2022. There are other examples—in the first T20 game against New Zealand earlier this year, his last over cost 27 runs, and India ended up losing the game 21 runs. But in the next game, his last two overs yielded only seven runs. Even in his last game for India, against Australia in Bangalore, he bled 37 runs in his first three overs, but in the last, with Indian defending 10 runs, he jettisoned the dangerous Matthew Wade and gave away just three runs to sew the game. He would not have even played the game—he was dropped for the fourth fixture after lless outings in the previous three games—had not Deepak Chahar flown out due to a family issue.

But these lucky breaks compensate for the thankless nature of his job. Unlike most of India’s first-choice seamers, he is limited to T20Is. The 50-over trial stopped with three games. The one-format confinement is a bane as he does not have an alternative avenue, other than the frailer world of IPL and unwatched realm of domestic cricket, for redemption. He is always walking a tight-rope, swaying to this side and that but somehow not falling off the slender thread. Whereas the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and Mohammed Shami have the platform of Tests and ODIs, where they could easily atone for the bad days in T20s.
Arshdeep is judged solely his T20 games, and measured indiscriminately the numbers—the number of wickets and runs. In T20s, there is nothing like the “unlucky spells” of Test cricket. Play and misses don’t count; neither does the top-edged six or the under-edged four. The evaluation of new-ball or death over specials seems to be through the eternal fault-finding eyes of a cynic—if you have bargained a few wickets, you are blasted for not containing runs. If you have been thrifty, you are nit-picked for not plucking wickets. Especially, if you do not have the aura of a celebrity cricketer.
The metrics are harder for someone who primarily bowls at the death and takes the new ball. Both times, the batsmen are inclined to chaos. The ball barely moves around at the start. When the conditions aligned once in Thiruvananthapuram, against South Africa, he produced an incisive new-ball spell, moving the ball both ways and threatening a wicket every ball. The ball rarely reverses at the death. The fence is often pushed inside; the pitches are often batting beauties catering to the gluttonous eyes of the audience. And Arshdeep does not have the eye-catching craft of Bumrah or Shami.
India’s Arshdeep Singh celebrates after bowling the last delivery to win the fifth T20 cricket match against Australia in Bengaluru. (AP)
He is not as quick as either, does not seam or seam, or possess cryptic variation. But what he has is the wicked angle of a left-arm seamer, the devil to shape the ball a shade inside to the right-hander as well as hold the line. At the death, he possesses a stump-blasting yorker (though its precision has tapered off in the last few games) and a nostril-sniffing short-ball (which remains sharp). He has developed cutters and slower balls too, though the overuse of it has made him easier to line-up.
All these skills, searing into the batsmen from unusual angles, explain why left-arm seamers are considered more equal than their right-arm colleagues, the basis they get a longer run than right-handers. A raft of seamers—from Umran Malik and Avesh Khan to Shivam Mavi and Mukesh Kumar—were tried around the same time as Arshdeep, but none perhaps got as deep a run to prove himself as the southpaw. And in a breeze, he sits fourth among India’s most prolific seamers in this format (58 wickets). On his wicket-taking skill hinges his potential longevity.
Yet, his spot in the side has never looked fully certain; yet, he has never been talked up as a permanent fixture, a bad spell away from being shamed, a dropped catch away from being trolled, or a bad day away from being forgotten. Even this South Africa tour is projected as some kind of last-chance saloon for him. But Arshdeep, in his short career, has travelled through the whole spectrum of emotions, and emerged stronger from crisis, often wielding a pen that has been as sharp as his bouncer.
Numbers
6 Arshdeep Singh is India’s sixth highest wicket-taker in T20s ever.
14.25 Among Indian bowlers who have picked more than 10 wickets, he has the second highest strike-rate.