World Cup 2019: Five surprises from the first week of the tournament

#4 Finger Spinners performing really well

Finger spinners have picked up a lot of wickets

There was a word going around that in limited overs games it’s the wrist-spinners who are effective and the finger spinners are slowly going out of the game. You get picked as a finger spinner only if you can bat. That was the case with all the teams. But in the first week of the World Cup, we saw something different.

Even though the wrist-spinners like Yuzvendra Chahal and Imran Tahir are there in the mix, the finger spinners who were written off are picking a lot of wickets. Mohammad Nabi picked up four wickets against Sri Lanka out of which three came in one over. Moeen Ali picked up three key wickets against Pakistan. Shakib Al Hasan with three wickets in three games and Mehedi Hasan with five wickets in three games are doing a great job for Bangladesh. Even the likes of Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik picked up a wicket each against England. They are sticking to their plans and bowling tight and that’s what is working for them. It would be interesting to see whether they have the same impact going forward in the tournament.