11.7
Ngidi's strike rate and one-and-a-half overs of his Man of the Match performance
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Sometimes you come across a cricket statistic that kind of blows your mind and also seems perfectly obvious at exactly the same time. That was me last night.
Lungi Ngidi has a strike rate of 11.7, 12 if you decide to round it off, and averages two wickets a game.
Ngidi has bowled 112 overs in 34 T20Is. It’s fair to say that this is a ridiculous strike rate. No bowler with 25 or more T20I wickets from full member countries has a better strike rate. That is phenomenal. Ngidi’s strike rate is a result of the ‘obscene amounts of revolutions he puts on the ball with a fast-arm action.’ According to Jarrod Kimber, Ngidi has one of the highest percentages of slower balls used in the World.
Bowling quick does things to your body. There is a lot of stress the body has to contend with. Just before the 2013-14 Under-19 World Cup, Ngidi suffered an injury. A stress fracture. He couldn’t make the team. His rehabilitation took the better part of a year. In 2017, he suffered another back injury and was out for four months. Between 2018 and 2020 Ngidi had problems ranging from hip to abdominal and side strains to knee niggles.
He had to have another look at his bowling if he wanted to have a long career. Ngidi built an arsenal of slower-ball deliveries. He has a preference for off-cutters and bowls a lot of them. Ngidi takes a lot of wickets with them too.
At his quickest, Ngidi didn’t break the speed gun. But he was lethal. During his Hilton College days, Ngidi had batters ducking, diving, and praying to see his spell out.
One time, defending 90 runs after St. Stithians (read: Kagiso Rabada) railroaded Hilton College, Ngidi had Saints limping at 90 for 8. One batter needed hospital attention and another almost had a broken arm. Ngidi could not win the game for Hilton, but he brought pace and fire.
That’s the same Lungi Ngidi who caught the attention of Proteas selectors. When he burst on the Proteas scene, Ngidi had a reputation for banging it in, rushing batters, and bowling aggressive lengths in short bursts. But, Ngidi didn’t just possess raw pace. He wasn’t just all speed and no control. As a youngster, Ngidi had accuracy that was beyond his years, he could also hold that line and length that is difficult to score off.
At the Perth Stadium, Ngidi was back at Hilton College running in as fast as he could and taking names. When he was brought into the attack in the fifth over, Ngidi rolled back the years.
4.1 - A good length delivery just outside the off stump. Rohit Sharma chipped over the cover ring. The ball was briefly airborne, but Sharma just got enough on the uppish drive for the ball to land in a safe area. 2 runs.
4.2 - Ngidi comes back with a short delivery that Rohit Sharma tried to pull away, but failed to do so with control because of the bounce at the WACA. The ball ballooned on Rohit Sharma, cramped him up and got the splice of the bat. Ngidi scampered to his right for a catch. Ngidi’s first wicket. India: 23/1.
The next batter in was Virat Kohli. Kohli the guy who played that videogame shot at the MCG against Pakistan. The MCG is a huge ground and what Kohli did there against Haris Rauf is supposed to be impossible. Rauf dug in a slower ball at a hard length, and somehow Kohli executed a backfoot straight drive off that delivery. Any batter that can do that is in great form.
4.3 - Ngidi’s delivery to Kohli was short of a length. Kohli slashed down to deep third for a single. 1 run.
4.4 - Ngidi bowled full and straight. KL Rahul clipped the ball to midwicket. The fielder there is just back far enough to allow Rahul and Kohli to cross for one run.
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There is a day when Ngidi took around seven wickets against Glenwood High School. The Glenwood batters' combined effort made less than 40 runs. Ngidi was in the zone.
In the 1970s, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced the idea of the flow state, a state where a player is fully immersed in their game. Everything else ceases to matter. It is a brief moment during which they feel invincible. The laws of space and physics are suspended. Time becomes elastic. The extraordinary becomes ordinary. This is the zone. Bowlers in the zone feel that they can place the ball wherever they please. If they can think it, they can execute it.
Ngidi was in the zone.
4.5 - Ngidi bowled a shortish 136kph delivery in the channel, the famed corridor of uncertainty. Kohli played it deftly along the ground down to third. 1 run.
4.6 - Ngidi bowled in the channel again. Looking to play the same shot as Kohli down to third, Rahul only managed to edge the ball to Aiden Markram who was fielding in the slips. Two wickets in one over. India 26/2.
The bowler versus batter contest is an endless debate. In Test cricket, the pair can spend hours engaged in wordless debate. Once or twice one gets a word in, they swap points and counterpoints and clever rejoinders, probing for weaknesses and setting traps as the momentum of the innings swings back and forth. In T20 cricket, the debate is pressurized all it takes are a couple of consecutive boundaries and the bowler feels the pressure.
When Ngidi returned for his second over, Kohli was getting warmed up. He got on the front foot for an extra cover drive. Kohli dispatched Ngidi to the boundary for four. Ngidi’s response was to change his line and length. His next delivery was full and straight. It was easy pickings for Kohli, who clipped it off his toes for another boundary.
Ngidi is a fighter. It’s a prerequisite for a top-tier bowler. His bowling is abundant heart/guts/spleen/backbone/balls - pick an anatomical metaphor of your choice. You can add liver if you like.
Ngidi recalibrated and retorted with a pitched-up delivery. Better line, better length. It was not quite the leg-stump half-volley he had offered before. Kohli dabbed to midwicket. No run. Ngidi managed to string two consecutive dot balls with a back-of-a-length delivery that Kohli dabbed to midwicket.
Kohli’s arrival at the crease had been welcomed by rapturous applause. His dismissal was met with shocked silence. Ngidi completed his set-up with a bouncer. Kohli attempted a pull shot but did not get enough bat on the ball. It spiralled towards Kagiso Rabada at fine leg. Ngidi had his third wicket of the day.
Ngidi grabbed his fourth wicket in his next over when he dismissed Hardik Pandya.
In February 2020, the Proteas played a T20I match against Australia in Port Elizabeth. For a large part of the match, Australia looked on course to chase down the Proteas’ total of 159. Then Lungi Ngidi happened. He dismissed Aaron Finch, Mitch Marsh and Alex Carey. ESPN Cricinfo declared Ngidi the most impactful bowler of the day, despite going for a few more runs. The reason was that Ngidi took the wickets of Australia’s dangerous batters. As he did in 2020 against Australia, he did against India.