Surely an important win for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 as they break their losing streak after defeating Punjab Kings (PBKS) by 5 wickets at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Before the clash, KKR were at the bottom of the IPL points table, but have now jumped to the fifth spot with Punjab on the sixth.
However, during the clash, KKR analyst Nathan Leamon was seen with a cryptic placard reading ’54’ during the middle overs of Punjab Kings’ batting. On-air commentators and fans had made far-fetched conjectures about what the code meant, but no one knows for sure.
Talking about the same, former Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag told Cricbuzz that there was nothing wrong with receiving such help from the backroom staff. However, this could undermine the role of a captain’s instincts.
“We have only seen such code language in the army. I think ’54’ was the name of their plan which could be about bowling a certain bowler at a particular time. I think that’s a little help that management and coaches want to give to the captain from the dugout. There’s nothing to frown upon in this, but if they are dictating [the game] from the outside then in this way, anyone can be the captain right? There’s no role left for his (Eoin Morgan) popular instinctive power in the game, the power with which he won the World Cup,” said Sehwag.
The former opener also guessed that the code may have conveyed some bowling changes or reminding Eoin Morgan of some pre-prepared strategy.
“I think one should definitely get help from outside but the captain himself has some instincts about which type of bowler to use when. I am not saying don’t take the help from outside because sometimes even the 25th player can give a good suggestion. But this suggestion should be only something which helps the captain and he thinks ‘Right, I didn’t think about it in this way’. Also, these things can help if he has forgotten something and the code reminds him of that then there’s no issue,” added Sehwag.
Apparently, Nathan Leamon also works as an analyst for the England men’s national team. He first drew attention during England’s limited-overs tour of South Africa in 2020. He had at that time used certain combinations of letters and numbers to send out information to Morgan. That incident too had drawn criticism from pundits and former players.
Sehwag cited the example of ‘instinctive’ captains like MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma to explain his point. “Many captains like MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma are instinctive. They change their strategy according to the situation on the ground. If I talk about MS here, then when Andre Russell was batting, there was no fine-leg or deep square-leg, just 2 players on the leg-side, and the rest were on the off-side. No analyst can tell you this; this is MS Dhoni’s immediate thinking. No doubt, help from the dugout is good, but there are certain instances when the captain’s instincts are more important,” concluded Sehwag.
