Ishan Kishan’s performance has been a major source of concern for India during their current white-ball match at home. In an ODI against Bangladesh in December 2022, the brash Jharkhand wicketkeeper-batsman caught everyone’s attention with a scorching double-hundred. But ever since, he hasn’t appeared to be at his best with the bat. In the ODI format, Shubman Gill was chosen over the southpaw to open alongside captain Rohit Sharma, and with the latter seizing his opportunities with both hands, it appears that Kishan will have to wait for a steady run.
Having said that, his recent T20 cricket performances haven’t been too encouraging either. His T20I average of 25.66 and strike rate of 121.12 since the beginning of 2022 reflect a troubling picture. There is still work to be done at the international level as a result of a few facets of Kishan’s game that have come to the fore. At this time, let’s examine three of his problematic playing characteristics:
1) Lack of strike rotation
Kishan frequently plays out an excessive number of dot deliveries. He bats first most days, therefore this directly affects India’s ability to take advantage of the powerplay. He has a formidable ball-striking talent to make up for it, but on days when he doesn’t, this shortcoming is sure to backfire. He never appeared settled during the second T20I match against New Zealand as he laboriously reached 19 off 32 balls, which included up to 21 dot balls. 246 of the 473 deliveries he has faced in his ODI career to date have been dot balls, for a dot ball percentage of 52. A similar figure in T20Is is 46.50 percent, with 246 of the 529 deliveries he has faced going unmarked. Kishan and India are quite concerned about this, and he needs to resolve it quickly.
2) Kishan seems caught on the crease while batting
It’s a fascinating scenario with Kishan since batters who frequently get caught in the crease appear to do so on the back foot. Although the southpaw tends to move forward, he appears to be stuck in the crease and unable to escape.
He has extremely little reaction time on a spinning track where good tweakers attack the stumps and can generate quick turns. That only makes things more difficult for him, as evidenced by his high dot-ball %, while the opposition is increasingly using the approach of bowling an off-spinner to cause it to turn away from him.
He has struggled against hard-length bowling on the stump line; Lockie Ferguson squaring him up in the third ODI in Indore comes to mind. Teams have taken note of this technical weakness, and it shows in the manner they bow to the wicket-keeper batter.
3) Issues surrounding his confidence
Although there is room for disagreement, it appears that Kishan’s returns are greatly influenced by his confidence. Of course, one can counter that when one thing goes wrong, everything else goes wrong as well. However, there have been a few instances in previous IPL seasons that reflect the same. He finished the season with the most hits over the fence after finding a deep vein of form in the IPL 2020. After making his debut for India as well, he was unable to repeat that season the following year, which caused his problems to worsen. The T20I series against South Africa in June 2022 was a good representation of this.
Despite not playing with his usual fluency, he managed to score a respectable number of runs throughout the series and get India off to a fast start. Of course, it goes both ways; as soon as Kishan consistently scores runs, his confidence will increase, and vice versa.
To build up the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and the upcoming series, India would be hoping that it occurs in the third T20I match against New Zealand in Ahmedabad.
