Cricket World Cup 2019: Aussies recruit Indian spinners to get batsmen ready for tournament of turn

For so long Australia’s World Cup dominance has relied on big, strapping fast bowlers. But this year it is different. You need spin to win and the defending champions are prepared.

Net bowler KK Jiyaz has turned into an excellent recruit.

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They are the two Indians who are paid by Cricket Australia to put our team in a spin.

Pardeep Sahu and KK Jiyas — unknown leggies who were sourced by Australian spin coach Sridharan Sriram — have been drafted into Australia’s World Cup camp with one simple instruction.

At every training session they occupy a net and bowl ball after ball after ball of leg-spin at the likes of Steve Smith, Usman Khawaja, David Warner and Aaron Finch.

“This is one of the great investments we’ve made,” coach Justin Langer told News Corp Australia.

Net bowler KK Jiyaz has turned into an excellent recruit.

“We talk about having throwdowns and net bowlers, but these are two really outstanding net bowlers.

“And they’ve got good insights into the game. Not only bowling to the players, but they’re talking good cricket to the players on how they’re trying to get them out and how they can get better.

“From that point of view it’s been valuable.”

Sahu and KK are far more fluent in wrong-uns and googlies than they are in English, but Langer said they were “almost part of our family now”.

Recently, Langer barked at them to hurry up and join his players in the warm up.

They are effectively Australia’s 16th and 17th squad members at the World Cup and that goes to the heart of the intense focus on spin.

For so long Australia’s World Cup dominance has relied on big, strapping fast bowlers puffing out their chests and scaring batsmen with express pace.

Pardeep Sahu has been invaluable to the Aussie Cup cause.

But this year it is different and that was evident when South African leggie Imran Tahir took the big wicket of England’s Jonny Bairstow with the very first over of the World Cup.

Australia staged an ODI crisis meeting at Southbank’s Quay West hotel during last year’s Boxing Day Test, where it was made clear you would spin to win in England.

“Overs 11-20 are really important in a game. That’s often when the spinners come on and we were falling down in that area,” Langer said.

“We were losing wickets. We were getting to the 40-over mark and we’re usually five or six wickets down, which doesn’t give us a launching pad to finish off the innings.

“Generally the spinners were taking those wickets. Not just overs 11-20, but 11-40.

“They were very important statistics for us. It’s not necessarily strike-rates against spin, but more wickets for and against spin.”

At one stage, Australia failed to bat out 50 overs in six out of seven matches. With the focus on survival heightened there were obvious casualties.

Justin Langer put spin at the top of his priority list.

Blasters D’Arcy Short and Chris Lynn — who both made ducks in their last ODI innings — were axed, along with Travis Head.

Head’s ODI average of 38.2 runs against pace bowling dropped to 30.4 against spinners while, in the JLT Cup, Lynn (53.6 to 39.2) and Short (66.3 to 46.4) also fell away against spin.

Plenty had to change under Langer and spin was at the top of the list.

The four-hour meeting — attended by Langer, the national selectors, the coaches, team analyst Dene Hills, interim high-performance boss Belinda Clark and high-performance network lead Brian McFadyen, deconstructed all the data.

“We looked at how we’re starting innings, how we’re playing through the middle overs, how we’re playing at the death, batting, bowling, fielding stats — everything,” Langer said.

“The trends of who was winning, who wasn’t winning, where we were at, why we were losing, what we’d won in the past.

“Then it becomes a clear picture of what you need to get better.”

Chris Lynn was one of three batsmen to get the axe.

Picking Australia’s weakness wasn’t exactly like picking Rashid Khan.

In the past two years, the World Cup holder’s average 37.3 runs for every wicket lost against spin. That ranks below Bangladesh and well below England (54.1) and India (52.3).

It’s a similar story with ball in hand. While India concedes just 26.5 runs for every spin wicket it takes, Australia leaks 60.7 — ranked second-last … and by some distance.

English pair Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid both jagged 12 wickets in Australia’s embarrassing 5-0 ODI loss in England 12 months ago.

Captain Aaron Finch fell to both of them twice, while Ali dismissed Shaun Marsh three times.

“We’d been performing so badly for about three years in one-day cricket,” Langer said.

“We’d lost something like 21 out of 23 games with a World Cup coming up.

Adam Zampa is considered a lock for the Aussie ODI side.

“I was really clear on how we should play our one-day cricket. But you can’t have one person clear and everyone else has different views on it, so we just canvassed a whole lot of views.

“When you’re all working together it’s so powerful. When you’re working in silos or you’ve all got different views it’s actually the opposite.

“I’m not saying it was the opposite, but we had to find a solution as to why we were playing so badly in one-day cricket.”

At the last World Cup Australia selected just one specialist spinner, Xavier Doherty, and he played just one match. Australia still won.

Now attacking leggie Adam Zampa is a lock, defensive offie Nathan Lyon will join him at times, Glenn Maxwell has had his overs increased while Steve Smith is bowling for the first time in more than three years.

“Spin was an area we had to get better as well in,” Langer said.

“Everyone around the world realised how important those wickets are in the middle overs.”

Assistant coach Ricky Ponting says how Australia plays and bowls spin will define its World Cup and special training drills have been devised to help batsmen grow their spin shields.

“The great players get back and they get forward, so we’ve put that into practice,” Langer said.

They’ve been trained to read the wrist positions of Sahu and KK while local trundlers Lloyd Pope, Mitchell Swepson and Tom O’Connell attended last month’s training camp in Brisbane to bowl at Smith and co.

“One of the proudest things of the last 12 months for me as a coach is how we identified a problem, and statistically everyone was telling us that, we recognised the problem and then we had to come up with a strategy,” Langer said.

“We’ve done that really well. Not only in our selection, but also we’ve had the two leggies from India travel with us throughout.

“On the back of the work we’ve done no doubt better placed than 12 months.”

SAHU PARDEEP (right-arm legspin)

Age: 33

From: Harayna

IPL clubs: Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab

*Relocated to Mumbai in search of first-class cricket as couldn’t get a chance stuck behind Amit Mishra and Chahal

*Once took 10 wickets in Mumbai club cricket

KK Jiyas (left-arm unorthodox)

Age: 27

From: Kerala

IPL club: Delhi Daredevils

*Both spinners have been with Cricket Australia since last September’s Test series in the UAE

*They will stay for the whole World Cup and had their CA contracts ticked off by the BCCI