Quartets, trifectas and pairs in cricket walk with an aura. But New Zealand’s trio of Cole McConchie, Mitchell Santner and Rachin Ravindra trudge without a halo. They have been the most modest, yet most prolific, spin firm in the tournament, firing New Zealand’s unrealistic dream. Between them, they have snared 15 wickets and conceded just 7.22 runs an over, without wielding any mystique or mystery; just plain practical wisdom practised to perfection.
Opposition batsmen would not lose sleep over any of them; neither would they spend countless hours dissecting their wrist positions and releases; they would not make frantic calls to friends or teammates who had played them. They are the staple spinners they would have encountered a thousand times. But yet, they could not conquer them.
The combined figures of the three on Wednesday read 9-0-54-4. A run a ball; four wickets. Job well done. None would remember the spells, but teammates would vouch for their impact.
When Rachin boarded the flight to India, he would not have anticipated in his wildest dreams that he would be his team’s highest wicket-taker (11), and not be amongst the top run-getters. His batting has seldom touched the heights it scaled during the 2023 World Cup. It has strained and spluttered. There was a juncture early in the tournament when his place in the XI was not secure either. But his bowling has emerged as a saviour.
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Rachin, a part-timer while the two others are specialists, is the most orthodox among them, imparting revolutions, tossing the ball, extracting turn and completing his action with a lovely pivot. He foxed David Miller with a deceitful change of pace, the wicket ball slower than his usual ones, and skidding on the angle. Miller thought he had covered the ball’s landing. But not quite. He fooled Markram with a quicker one, the ball squeaking off his bat’s inside half.
The oddball among them is McConchie, the archetypal Kiwi cricketer who appears on scorecards and not the memory of the watcher. There is nothing outwardly exciting about him. He trades in off-spin that turns the bare minimum; he doesn’t conjure a curving parabola in flight, the ball doesn’t dip devilishly, he does not turn the ball the other way or wield the mystery variants. There is not even a funky hair-do or inked forearms that dwell on the audience’s mind. The Irish-rooted surname is the most striking feature about him.
Making the most of everything
Yet, like uncanny cricketers from uncanny New Zealand, he is ultra-efficient. He second-guesses batsmen and double-bluffs them. He knew what Quinton de Kock anticipated the ball after he shimmied down the surface and thumped him for a four. The natural response would have been a shorter ball. De Kock waited on the back foot.
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The ball was indeed on the shorter side, but skidded onto him, caused by the freshness of the surface allied with his over-spin, and the South African opener could only mishit to the mid-on fielder. De Kock cursed his shot. It was a poor stroke, but he was out-thought too.
A spinner of such modest attributes lulls batsmen into a false sense of security. Ryan Rickelton, McConchie’s victim on the next ball, would offer testimonials. The ball was short and outside off-stump. His eyes gleamed. He slashed instinctively. Only that a fielder, Finn Allen, was stationed at backward point. He cut straight to him. Rickleton is a sumptuous cutter of the ball, but at the start of the innings, he tends to play it uppishly.
McConchie has been New Zealand’s surprise impact man. He was not in the initial squad, but was flown in as the replacement for the injured Michael Bracewell. But for the spinner-friendly conditions in Sri Lanka, he would have been confined to the dugout. But McConchie seized his breaks, offering useful all-round contributions.
His journey has trodden the same path as those of most journeymen spinners from his country. He began as an off-spinner, but tweakers and air-conditioners in blustery Christchurch are often redundant machines. To brighten his career prospects, he was advised to beef up his batting. So he did, and his game-time enhanced. In between, he set up a commercial cleaning firm with his father, a gym with his wife, and a strength and conditioning centre with fellow cricketer Greg King, who later became the fitness trainer of Chennai Super Kings and India.
Every one of the three is subtly different. Santner teases batsmen with angles, release points and pace. Against South Africa, he largely bowled in the 90kph range. It was not a surface where the ball gripped and spun; he is not a natural turner either. So he dug deep into his experience and wits and kept the Proteas quiet. He and his pals might not have a halo, but they surely know how to win a match, perhaps a tournament too.
