🏏 India’s bias against left-handers doesn’t apply in T20 — and that’s good news for Abhishek Sharma
My Week in Sport(s) 🏒 🏀 ⚽️ 🏉 🏈
Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.
Covered in this edition: 🏏 Abhishek Sharma, 🏀 Dominique Malonga, 🏈 Travis Hunter, ⚽️ Kevin De Bruyne and 🏉 Maddison Levi.
🏏 India’s bias against left-handers doesn’t apply in T20 — and that’s good news for Abhishek Sharma
One of the reasons why Sunrisers Hyderabad — who featured in last week’s edition of the newsletter — scored as quickly as they did in the Indian Premier League last year was the presence of 24-year-old Abhishek Sharma at the top of their batting order.
As Kartikeya Date of
has noted, it’s been teams’ openers who have driven the league’s overall shift in batting approach over the last couple of seasons. In particular, top-order batters now hit sixes much more frequently than they used to — and the left-handed Sharma has been at the vanguard of this change. He hit a six once every 5.9 balls he faced as an opener in the 2024 IPL, while the competition’s other batters in those positions hit one every 14.2 balls on average.So impressive was his IPL campaign that he quickly became one of India’s preferred openers in international T20 cricket, too. He debuted shortly after the men’s team won the T20 World Cup last June — and some of their old guard retired from the format. When I wrote about Yashasvi Jaiswal’s rise last year, I looked at the fact that India’s selectors have historically favoured right-handers at the top of their batting order in test matches. That has never been the case in T20Is, though.
Jaiswal is an anomaly in the longer format, but Abhishek isn’t in T20Is. Overall, 36% of India’s innings by openers in the format have been played by left-handers — in line with the average share of 39% observed across the top level of the men’s game. And their selectors have been right to back him: while facing the most balls of any Indian opener since last July, Sharma has recorded an effective boundary rate of 40.6%. Over this period, the team’s other openers have recorded an eB% of 29.7%.
Comfort taking risk — and accepting volatile returns — is the basis of an effective T20 strategy. Gautam Gambhir, India’s coach, has been clear about this: he says that he wants his team to play “high-risk, high-reward cricket”, and accepts that there will be stumbles as a result of setting out with that intent. Gambhir probably isn’t worried about Abhishek’s cold streak to begin the 2025 IPL, then. There’s plenty of evidence of the upside of having a clean striker like him lead off for your team in T20 cricket.
🏀 The obvious comparison for young French centre Dominique Malonga isn’t the right one
Some player comparisons are suspiciously easy to make. In next week’s WNBA Draft, one of the top prospects selected is likely to be a mobile French player with a heady combination of both size and skill — and a penchant for highlight-reel plays.
Despite her obvious promise, we shouldn’t just assume that Dominique Malonga’s impact will be analogous to Victor Wembanyama’s in the NBA. Before he was drafted, we looked at how Wemby’s ball skills exceeded those of his French peers by using free-throw percentage — a good indicator of shooting ‘touch’ — as a proxy. We can assess Malonga in the same way. She currently shoots free throws at a success rate well below her league’s average — and trails most of the LFB’s other taller players, too.
This isn’t a comment on her overall ability. She’s by far the tallest player in the cohort analysed above, meaning she has the greatest potential to stand out in other ways on the court; she’s also the youngest, with the most time to improve her skills. Whenever she arrives in America — she’s reported to have signed with Turkish club Fenerbahçe for the next three years — Malonga will be a must-watch prospect. We don’t have to expect her to be the ‘Female Wemby’, though, to be excited to see her grow.
What else I learned last week
🏈 Two-way prospect Travis Hunter isn’t an occasional offensive player
The NFL Draft is also coming up — and Colorado’s Travis Hunter is the prospect I’m most interested in. The hybrid corner-receiver became the first player to win the Heisman Trophy while playing as a defender since Charles Woodson in 1997.
Woodson was also used as a receiver during his career, but has said himself that there’s no comparison between his workload and Hunter’s. (“Travis actually plays both sides of the ball.”) Here’s how much he contributed at NCAA level: in addition to the 50-plus snaps per game Hunter played at corner, only nine wide receivers in college football were involved in a higher share of their team’s offensive plays, per CollegeFootballData.com. Hopefully he gets the chance to do it all in the NFL, too.
⚽️ Kevin De Bruyne can still create — but doesn’t have much else left
33-year-old Kevin De Bruyne will leave Man City this summer. The Belgian’s ability to progress the ball and create chances from midfield made him one of the world’s most influential players in his prime. He’s far from the all-rounder he once was, though.
FBref has advanced data for the last eight Premier League seasons. During the first four — from 2017 to 2021 — De Bruyne assisted shots worth about 0.5 xG every 90 minutes, while also completing a tackle or interception once every 39 touches. He has created chances at a similar rate in the last four seasons, but can no longer keep up when City don’t have the ball. Despite the team’s average possession share falling, he’s only made a tackle or interception once every 53 touches over this period.
🏉 Australia’s leading sevens try-scorer Maddison Levi is built different
Australia lost to New Zealand in the final of each of the two recent stops on the women’s SVNS World Series: 26-19 in Hong Kong, and 31-7 in Singapore. It wasn’t all bad news, though: one of their stars left last weekend’s event as a record-breaker.
Reigning World Player of the Year Maddison Levi reached the milestone of 200 total tries faster than any other player in sevens history. At 1.83m, Levi is the tallest of the 27 active players on the women’s circuit with at least 50 career tries; averaging 1.5 per game, she has by far the highest strike rate among this cohort, too. 13 other players have scored at a rate of one try every two career games or better, and the Australian towers over them all: their median height is 1.67m, and only two others are over 1.70m.
The next edition of My Week in Sport(s) will be published in three weeks, on Friday May 2nd.
