Shardul Thakur, The No. 8 ODI Batter. – An Analysis

One of the most raging topics these days has been the batting ability Team India has down the order. So much so, that we seem to be willing to go to any lengths to find or fit someone lower down who can bowl and bat.

At the fore front of this discussion is Shardul Thakur. The common narrative that is going around is about the more than useful batting ability of Shardul Thakur and how that trumps other more skilled bowlers in contention for the no. 8 position.

So how did this start?

Everyone saw and admired the lower order rescue acts by Shardul Thakur in the red ball format in away conditions against strong teams that actually helped India make an impact in those test matches. But, does his ability translate effectively to the ODI format?

We will have a deeper look at this here. Not only the numbers, but also the context around those batting performances.

Lets have a look at few points (implied and explicitly stated) in the common narrative and couple of areas to explore arising out of those assumptions

• More than useful ODI batting ability of Shardul Thakur
• Thakur’s ODI bowling ability being comparable to other bowlers and hence getting an edge over them because of additional ODI batting ability.
• Batting ability as compared to others and earlier no.8s
• His ODI run scoring helps India

ODI Stats for Shardul Thakur

Lets jump into it first with an overall look at the ODI Stats for Shardul Thakur.

Just a cursory glance shows that by any means these are not great batting numbers but hey, he has batted at 7 or lower most of the times. So we will benchmark this later with good no.8 and 9 batters to get a perspective.

Adding Context – Shardul Thakur’s Batting

Context highlight of Shardul Thakur’s notable batting performances in ODIs

• Shardul Thakur’s 1 score of 50, 1 score of 40, 1 score of 25 and 1 score of 33 are the only notable ones among all the innings.
• The 50 and 40 were already lost causes and his contributions wont have changed the result and India lost anyways at then end.
  • 1st ODI, Paarl, January 19, 2022, India’s Tour of South Africa – Even if he had scored 15 more, India would have lost, so yes he did bat well but the impact was inconsequential.
  • 2nd ODI, Paarl, January 21, 2022, India’s Tour of South Africa – Similar situation here as above
  • In both the above cases he remained not out and still the overall average we see is nothing to boast about so we can imagine the batting contributions most of the other times.
• 25 also was not a match changing one as India had already scored huge and even without this India would have won
  • 3rd ODI (D/N), Indore, January 24, 2023, New Zealand tour of India – India won by 90 runs here. Even if he had not contributed, everybody else did. So from an impact perspective again it was inconsequential.
• 33 against SA was the only one where he could have made an impact if he would have stayed with Samson. This was also of no avail and in fact if he had stuck around and finished the game, we could have counted this as an impact. Also, 33 cant be considered so substantial that we could rave about him being the fighter here. Iyer made 50 at good pace and Samson almost blew SA away. He just needed some support which Shardul Thakur looked like he could provide but ultimately failed to do so and his innings again was inconsequential here.
  • 1st ODI (D/N), Lucknow, October 06, 2022, South Africa’s tour of India
• Probability of him scoring 25+ is 12.5% overall. At no. 8 the probability is 10.5%

Follow up questions?

These lead us to the below important follow up questions?

• Are these observations compelling enough for which we want to sacrifice a proper skillful bowler like Shami in the XI? Or more, excluding few of the genuine bowling options like Chahal, Krishna, Ashwin from the squad?
• How many times in the past 2 years or 4 years, has a no. 8 won India a match?
• How many batters do we need? Are we looking to win the WC based on batting at no. 8?
• What do the numbers of other number 8s look like?

To address the above lets start with some batting stats for couple of other skilled bowlers.

Ashwin at No. 8 (Taken overall stats here as he has hardly been selected in the last 2 years for ODI)

Shami (at no.8 or below in last 2 years)

It is simply amazing to note that Shami has a better average than Shardul Thakur in the last two years as a batter. In fact, Shami has mostly batted at no. 10 even when he got a chance to bat, so it becomes even more amazing. So in effect, we can safely say that Shami’s batting is more effective as far as ODIs are considered in the last 2 years.

And without any debate we can also agree on that Shardul Thakur is not more skillful as a bowler than other genuine bowlers that are around. (We will have a separate analysis for Thakur’s bowling impact as well).

So to answer the first point, it doesn’t seem compelling enough to include Shardul Thakur over others in the name of batting ability or even bowling ability for that matter.

Shardul Thakur Vs Benchmarks

Now lets benchmark some of the ODI no. 8 & 9 batting ability of all time, just to set things in perspective.

At No. 8

At No.9

I am sure its not very hard to see in the above tables, that what we should actually be meaning when we talk about someone having batting ability at no. 8 or 9.

Few telling insights

• In the no. 8 list, if we exclude Klusener and Harris, the other two were not even considered batters. Thakur is not even playing the same game given these numbers and point to note is that scoring runs has improved in the modern era because of batsman friendly rules and use of 2 new balls. So, by no means Thakur has ODI no. 8 batting ability. We should be settling that debate here.
• Even amongst the no.9 list, none of them were considered batters. May be Brett Lee was considered as someone who could bat but others were not considered even in that bracket and they are still miles better.
• Even more astonishing, Zaheer Khan at no. 10 had better average than Thakur, so unless anyone remembers Zaheer Khan being called as someone who could bat, please feel free to correct us.

Any finally, lets address where the buck stops.

“How many times in the past 2 years or 4 years, has a no. 8 won India a match?” & “How many batters do we need?”

• In the last 4 years, India has won 14 ODIs where India lost 6 or more wickets. (Implying that India no. 8 got a chance to bat out of a total of 56 ODIs. This is excluding Asia Cup)
  • https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/team/6.html?class=2;filter=advanced;result=1;spanmax1=20+Sep+2023;spanmin1=20+Sep+2019;spanval1=span;template=results;type=team;view=innings;wicketsmin1=6;wicketsval1=wickets
• Out of these 14, actually there are 4 instances where the contributions of no. 8 batsman helped India’s cause. And in 2 of those instances it was Shardul Thakur and he got to bat in 9 of those 14 matches.
• So all in all there is a 7% chance that a no.8 would help India win. Is this enough to sacrifice a genuine skilled bowler?

Final Words

• Based on the batting ability data, what batting prowess we are talking about for which we are willing to sacrifice one proper skillful bowler in the playing XI and in the squad.
• Probability of Thakur getting to bat is low and even lower is the probability of him scoring 25+ and probability India turning a match due to his batting is negligible.
• Thakur faces less than 13 balls per innings in ODIs on an average and seldom completes his full quota of overs. Does gambling away an out an out bowler for this seems reasonable? In our opinion it is not.
• We are trying to fix the middle order problem by finding solutions in the lower order which is quite bizarre and counter-intuitive.

One of the articles on espncricinfo took a contrarian stand than us on the importance of Thakur. Here is is the link to that.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/mohammed-shami-vs-sharul-thakur-the-india-world-cup-debate-that-never-was-1399631?fbclid=IwAR2IFrdi5cFQ4YqKdEFAgepWAE0eltmw5HAoVtIpCVthNHouC36dFhn8jqI

Now, this article again concludes that Thakur solves a very big problem for Indian team even though he is not the perfect solution but that is exactly what we have debunked in our analysis.

The best argument for Thakur in the cricinfo article is the lame one that India “almost” won the semi as Jadega was no.8 and “almost” took the team over the line. The keyword here is almost. That is the exact point. Do we want to have players for an “almost” scenario. Even then, a player with Jadega’s ability could not get us over the line, do we expect Thakur to do better. Data does not suggest that. He will, on the other hand give away 20 extra runs. And no matter what people think, at the end of the day, runs per over conceded do matter in limited overs. So no, Thakur does not solve any of the problems but in fact, creates more.

Another argument was that Vs Eng MSD and Jadhav painfully did not go for hitting as there was no one after them. This is now one of the most illogical defenses for players batting slow when aggression was needed. There was no one after them but what did batting slow achieve? We lost anyways. If players of the calibre of MSD and Jadhav would have still tried, who knows the result could have been better. If an absolute tail was at the crease it would have been understandable to play it safe. Which other team has thought like this in recent times with proper batters at the crease? We can’t seem to think of any. With this we wont be satisfied with batsman till no. 11.

So, the article does not settle any debate and in fact, its premise that there is not debate at all is flawed at a fundamental level.

Let us know in the comments below, what you think of these insights. These are just our opinions and analysis that we have done.

P.S we do not have anything against any player personally. We are just trying to validate common perceptions with data and context. We also understand that these players are skillful and have reached where they are but that does not take away the knowledge of the game the fans have. After all, everybody who plays the game does not understand it very well (otherwise everybody would be like MSD and Ganguly when it came to captaincy) and everybody who understands it cannot play.

See you all again with another interesting analysis soon.

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