The five areas of significant tactical interest ahead of the Champions Trophy final
Karthik Krishnaswamy08-Mar-20254:00
Key match-up: India spinners vs NZ batters
Most ODI teams are incomplete in one way or another. They either prioritise batting depth and end up relying heavily on part-timers, or pick the best possible bowling attack and end up with a long tail. India and New Zealand are easily the two most complete teams of the Champions Trophy 2025. They have top-order batters with a wide range of gears, bowling attacks with variety and incision, and allrounders who ensure both batting and bowling depth. It’s only fitting that they meet in the final, in a rematch of the title bout of 2000. Here are five areas of significant tactical interest ahead of the match.Win the toss, and?It’s not been the easiest question to answer in Dubai, with the four matches here so far producing only one clear pattern: India have lost all their tosses and won all their matches.A lot of this, of course, is down to India’s sheer strength. They bat all the way down to No. 8, have six genuine bowling options, and the conditions have allowed them to pack their attack with spinners and not really worry about the one big issue they had coming into the tournament, of dealing with Jasprit Bumrah’s absence.Related
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Because they’re so good, they’ve won three games while chasing and won the one game they batted first in despite slipping to 30 for 3. Through all this, it hasn’t been clear at all whether it’s better to bat or bowl first in Dubai.That’s generally a good thing ahead of a big match, suggesting that conditions haven’t changed all that much between innings. Dew hasn’t been a factor – unlike during the T20 World Cup in 2021, which was played in October-November, when chasing proved distinctly advantageous.Given this, both teams may prefer to bat first, with Dubai’s pitches having shown signs of slowing down over 100 overs – though not to the extent of giving the defending team an obvious advantage. During their semi-final defeat here, Australia perhaps showed the best way for teams to approach playing at this venue, even if they didn’t themselves follow through fully. At 198 for 4 in the 37th over, they were perfectly placed for a big finish, only for the back-to-back wickets of Steven Smith and Glenn Maxwell to derail their innings.With Glenn Phillips, Michael Bracewell and Mitchell Santner in their lower-middle order, New Zealand could well look to follow the template that Australia half-set: bat first, keep wickets in hand, and put pressure on India through the back ten.New Zealand’s new-ball threatThey could put plenty of pressure through the front ten, too – with the ball. Of all bowling teams at this Champions Trophy, New Zealand have been the most impressive side in the first powerplay, boasting the best economy rate in the phase (4.32) and the second-best average (24.71) behind India (21.55). It’s a particularly impressive feat, given that New Zealand have played three of their four games on the flatter pitches of Pakistan. Their efforts to keep the top orders of Pakistan and South Africa on the tightest of leashes on pitches where their own batters had scored 320 and 362 showed just how good they have been with the new ball.ESPNcricinfo LtdIndia found this out when the teams met in the group stage, when Matt Henry’s seam and Kyle Jamieson’s swing (and Glenn Phillips’ GlennPhillipsness at backward point) reduced them to 30 for 3 inside seven overs. They managed to fight back and win that game, but they won’t want to get into that sort of situation again in the first place.There is some doubt around Henry’s availability for the final, as he recovers from a shoulder injury sustained while taking the catch of Heinrich Klaasen in the semi-final against South Africa, and it will be a major blow to New Zealand’s hopes if he is ruled out. But his colleagues have been pretty good with the new ball. Jamieson has a first-powerplay economy rate of 4.21 in this tournament, and Will O’Rourke has done even better, going at 3.33 while picking up two wickets in six overs in this phase.The Rohit effectWhichever pair takes the new ball for New Zealand, they’ll come up against Rohit Sharma, who’s had a most curious Champions Trophy.He’s scored 104 runs at an average of 26.00, with a top score of 44, and that doesn’t look particularly good on the surface, but all his runs have come in the first ten overs, a phase in which no batter from any team has scored more runs.And he’s scored those runs at a strike rate of 107.21, which has allowed his opening partner Shubman Gill to take his time early on. If Gill’s first ten-overs strike rate of 93.42 doesn’t seem particularly slow compared to Rohit’s, consider the first five overs – Rohit has scored 71 runs at 102.89, Gill 28 at 63.63.Rohit hasn’t always looked fluent while batting this way, and it might potentially benefit him, at a personal level, to take a little more time getting his eye in. Given the duration of ODIs and the conditions in Dubai, there’s even an argument to be made that it could benefit India for him to do so. But their batting depth allows him to start innings in this turbocharged manner, and these starts are the biggest stamp Rohit has put on India’s white-ball teams as captain, so it’s unlikely he’ll change it in this big final.Can Mitchell and Latham put India’s spinners off their lengths?Whether India stick with four spinners – they seem likely to – or pick just – just! – three, New Zealand’s batters know they’ll face a trial by spin. They’ll know they can’t simply let the spinners settle into their lengths and will have to figure out ways of putting pressure back on the bowlers. Two of the best weapons for doing that are the sweep – and all its variants – and the use of feet to get down the pitch, and New Zealand have a middle-order pair who excel at using them.ESPNcricinfo LtdAmong Full Member batters with at least 300 runs against spin since the start of 2023, Tom Latham has scored a greater percentage of his runs (52.63) than anyone else via these two methods. His prowess at the sweep and reverse-sweep are well known, but he’s also a frequent user of his feet – only Sadeera Samarawickrama (70) has stepped out to spinners more often than Latham (66) in this period. Much like Cheteshwar Pujara in Test cricket, Latham generally keeps the ball along the ground when he uses his feet, and is one of only two frequent steppers-out in this period (Afghanistan’s Rahmat Shah is the other) with a sub-100 strike rate while doing so.Daryl Mitchell also steps out a lot, and he does this in a more stereotypical way, hitting 13 sixes – only Shubman Gill (15) has hit more while stepping out in this period – and striking at over 220 while doing so. He’s a pretty adept sweeper and reverse-sweeper too, and his total percentage of runs via sweeps and forays down the pitch (41.52) puts him in the top five among Full Member batters.This contest between India’s spinners and New Zealand’s Nos. 4 and 5 comes with a fair amount of history. Latham and Mitchell have scored two hundreds each against India, with both of Mitchell’s efforts coming during the 2023 World Cup.They’ll know they’ll have to battle the conditions as well as the bowlers, though, with the pace of India’s spinners – Kuldeep Yadav is the only one of the four who consistently bowls below 85kph – making it a genuine challenge to get down the pitch to them, and their ability to attack the stumps turning sweeps into a risky proposition, particularly given Dubai’s lack of bounce. Latham found this out the hard way when he was lbw missing a reverse-sweep off Ravindra Jadeja in the group stage.Kohli vs Santner (and Ravindra?)It feels like a while ago now, but Virat Kohli came into this Champions Trophy with quite a lot of scrutiny – external, certainly, if not from the team management – around his form. His 100* against Pakistan and his 84 against Australia have, however, shown that he retains his genius for the 50-overs game no matter what he’s going through in other formats.Both those innings showcased the method – so simple on its surface, yet so hard for most others to replicate – that’s made Kohli one of the ODI GOATs. Very few batters through the format’s history have matched his ability to accumulate risk-free runs at a rapid clip; he’s an expert manipulator of balls into gaps, and a supreme athlete between wickets. There’s a lot more to his game, too – he couldn’t have pulled off Hobart or Jaipur, among many other innings, otherwise – but those other facets haven’t really been tested at this Champions Trophy.As the graphic above shows, only three batters (minimum 100 balls faced in that phase) have achieved lower dot-ball percentages through the middle overs of this tournament than Kohli (38.65). And though his boundary percentage (25.43) is on the lower side as well, this is mostly down to the fact that he hasn’t needed to attempt that many boundaries, with so much of his batting during this tournament coming in chases of sub-250 targets.Given the conditions in Dubai, Kohli is likely to play a similar sort of role in the final, whether India bat first or second, with the batters around him given greater responsibility for finding boundaries.New Zealand’s challenge, then, will be to try and force Kohli out of his comfort zone and find ways to push up his dot-ball percentage. In Mitchell Santner, they perhaps have just the weapon for this task.Since the start of 2021, Kohli has scored significantly quicker against pace (strike rate 102.70) than spin (84.50) in ODIs, and while he’s struck at over 80 against the other three kinds of spin, he’s had his struggles against left-arm orthodox, going at 73.02 and getting out ten times in 21 innings.ESPNcricinfo LtdIn this period, Santner has a terrific head-to-head record against Kohli, getting him out twice in five innings while conceding less than four an over (3.82). Rachin Ravindra hasn’t done too badly either, not dismissing Kohli but keeping him to 36 runs in 46 balls. New Zealand certainly could get through a few overs of Santner and Ravindra in tandem if Kohli and another right-hand batter are together, particularly given the conditions in Dubai.This is precisely why India have used Axar Patel as their regular No. 5 through this tournament. He breaks up their otherwise entirely right-handed top order, and has the game to put pressure back on the spinners.
