World Cup: South Africa’s left-arm pacer Marco Jansen could be biggest threat for Indian batsmen | Cricket-world-cup News

A stocky left-arm net bowler with long strides had the longest spell of the evening. Every Indian batsman would face him, every Indian batsman would ask him to probe a variety of lengths and lines. Virat Kohli instructed him to bowl short and into his body; KL Rahul would tell him to bombard the fifth-sixth stump line. Shubman Gill would request him to bowl from 18-19 yards.It’s not hard to tell why the left-armer was in demand. Indian batsmen were readying for the toughest test they could face on Sunday, that is the beanpole Marco Jansen. The net bowler was neither as tall nor as quick as Jansen. He was barely getting the ball rear up to the chest or hurry the batsmen.
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An hour ago, on the same pitch, Jansen had let it rip. The first ball he bowled kicked up at an awkward height from a good-length area, whizzing past the shoulders of the bemused batsman. In the next half an hour, he would keep the batsman literally on their toes. He would seam the ball into them, make it kick away and then at the end of it, wear the pads again for another hit. The net bowler could conjure none of these devils.
But some simulation is better than nothing, Indian batsmen would have thought. For, from time to time, they have struggled to negotiate top-class left-handers capable of seaming the ball both ways.
The other afternoon, Dilshan Madhushanka had top-order sweating at times to measure the movement he was extracting with the new ball. In the past, Trent Boult, Shaheen Afridi and Reece Topley have tied them in knots. But Jansen is a vastly different devil.
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He is the tallest among them, standing at 2.06m. It was the sudden inches he put on after turning 17 that prompted his father to convert his son from a rumbling fly-half to an all-rounder. He was a rug player himself and desired his son to follow in his footsteps. But his son’s height, he thought, would better suit a fast bowler.
The extra height gives him extra bounce off the pitch, more margin for error with his length. Batsmen become wary of driving him, so much so that even fed with drivable balls, they often fail to get fully forward, making them more prone to nick one behind.

In a sense, he is the left-handed version of Kyle Jamieson, quicker and meaner than him, but with lither shoulders and narrower wingspan. Worse, he has been in the form of his life—in this World Cup, he is the joint second-highest wicket taker, grabbing 16 at 20.06, with an economy rate of 5.83, and striking every 20th ball.
Of them, 12 have arrived in the powerplay, at an average of 13.08. At the start of the tournament he struggled, and admittedly lost his way in pursuit of movement bowling fuller. He would soon correct it, and confess: “Previously, I was focusing a lot on something that was not always going to be there [swing]. Now, I constantly try and hit the wicket hard and through that get some purchase.”
For many, the frightening bounce is his biggest gift. India’s opening pair, Rohit Sharma and Gill are happy executors of the pull, but would they be as comfortable keeping the ball down or getting under when facing a quicker, taller and impeccably accurate quick?
In the past, Rohit has been hurried when pulling really quick bowlers. Gill could be overeager and play one pull too many. Moreover, pulling a left-armer slanting the ball away at pace is more difficult than playing a similar stroke against a right-armer angling in. The angle could enhance the risk of them slicing the ball in the air.
Vulnerable to short balls
More than the openers, Kohli has been vulnerable to the short balls cannoning onto his neck at the start of the innings. Like the top-edge Josh Hazlewood induced at the start of his innings at Chepauk. Once his innings flows along and his feet get livelier, he douses them with more comfort. So has been Shreyas Iyer. Though he talked up his skill to deal with the short-ball, and walked it against Sri Lanka seamers, it still remains a weakness of his.
Then comes Rahul, riding a wave of form but with a harrowing past against Jansen. Thrice in India’s Test tour to South Africa in 2021—in India’s previous trip in 2018, he impressed Kohli in the nets—did he consume Rahul. The method of dismissals read thus: caught off a top-edged pull; snared at second slip off defensive poke, bounce again the culprit as the ball climbed onto him; caught the second slip after he edged a drive off a fuller length. Most Read
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The three dismissals offered a peek into the mastery of lengths too. He could seamlessly interchange between short, full and back of length. He might not bowl as full as Boult, or curl the ball as deviously into the pads as Afridi, but the subtle deviation he coaxes would suffice.
After the New Zealand hammering, Kagiso Rabada would wax eloquent on his colleague: “He is hitting great lengths, he is swinging the ball both ways, and he has got a great bumper. Normally, if you have that in your artillery and you execute it more often than you don’t, you will be successful. He is just a natural bowler. He has got a natural action, he can swing it, he can nip it, he is gifted with a talent of just bowling and making it look natural.”
Jansen might not be the lone threat in South Africa’s fleet of seamers. There is obviously a modern-day master in Kagiso Rabada, a new-age enforcer in Gerald Coetzee, a slippery Lungi Ngidi. But Jansen could pose them the stiffest test, not just in this game, but the biggest yet in the tournament.