4/8/24, 11:49 AM IPL 2024 - How Lucknow Super Giants mastered the art of defending totals | ESPNcricinfo

them to play three spinners without compromising on their seam attack - Amit Mishra made a few
appearances as their third spinner last season, and M Siddharth has been their powerplay spinner this
year.

Siddharth is an interesting bowler, a left-arm spinner whose stock ball with the new ball is the
swinging arm ball. It's a hugely useful defensive weapon against both the right-hand batter (whom it
can cramp for room) and the left-hand batter (against whom it can be used to shut out the leg side,
especially while bowling from around the wicket).

All this makes Siddharth a typical LSG bowler. Their lead spinner Ravi Bishnoi is a unique legspinner
who loves bowling to left-hand batters, and Krunal is a non-traditional left-arm fingerspinner who has
mastered the art of survival via clever use of angles and speed of delivery.

"All three spinners have been key for us," Rahul said. "Sid coming in this season has done really well,
plays a really crucial part when he bowls with the new ball. It's obviously not going to be easy for a
youngster to come in and bowl in the powerplay, and he can go for a bit of runs, but he's shown great
temperament and he's given us that steady bowling in the first 2-3 overs in the powerplay and picked
up one wicket, but his job is more to restrict the batsmen and not let the team get off to a flying start,
which he's doing really well.

"KP obviously is very experienced - he's played IPL for so many seasons and he's a very very smart
bowler, he knows what to do - and Bishnoi obviously, played with him for so many years and he just
keeps getting better and better."

LSG also tend to pick seamers with solid defensive traits - Naveen-ul-Haq and Yash Thakur, for
example, like bowling cutters and cross-seam deliveries into the wicket - while also usually being able
to call upon one or two with genuine wicket-taking ability - Mark Wood, Dushmantha Chameera and
Avesh Khan in the past, Mohsin Khan and Mayank Yadav this season.

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