‘If you can bowl this to Chris Gayle, well and good,’ How MS Dhoni’s advice helped Shahbaz Nadeem set up batsman’s dismissal

As part of his variation, and knowing Gayle’s success rate against left-arm spinner, Nadeem had started bowling chinaman in the nets.

India left-arm spinner Shahbaz Nadeem has revealed a nugget regarding former captain MS Dhoni that helped him dismiss the dangerous Chris Gayle during an IPL match.

MS Dhoni and Chris Gayle during an IPL match.(Getty Images)

As part of his variation, and knowing Gayle’s success rate against left-arm spinner, Nadeem started bowling chinaman in the nets. It was during an edition of the Vijay Hazare Trophy that Nadeem went up to Dhoni and asked him for an advice to dismiss Gayle.

“Why I started bowling the Chinaman again was because whenever I had played in the IPL, I had never bowled against Gayle. So, it was always in my mind and people also used to say that Gayle bashes the left-arm spinners a lot, so how should I escape. So, I used to say that I will bowl the Chinaman to him. So just thinking about Gayle I practiced the Chinaman for two years,” Nadeem told Aakash Chopra on his YouTube channel.

“Once I was speaking to Mahi bhai (Dhoni) when he came to play Vijay Hazare. I asked him everyone else is fine, but what should be bowled to Gayle as a left-arm spinner. His reply was – ‘First of all, you should not bowl to him at all.’ But if you need to bowl, try not to give him the ball in his arc. Either bowl outside his range or close to his pads, so that he takes a single’. I then asked him, ‘What if I bowl the chinaman?’ He said ‘if you can bowl it to him, it’s terrific. But even then, there should be a certain amount of pace on the ball.’”

Nadeem’s moment of truth finally arrived when his IPL team Delhi Capitals (formerly Daredevils) faced Royal Challengers Bangalore in Match 56 of the IPL 2017. When Zaheer Khan handed the ball to Nadeem, the left-arm spinner let his skipper know of his plan of bowling wrist spin to Gale, and the ploy worked as off the third ball of his over, the RCB batsman slapped the ball down midwicket’s throat.

“I remember I bowled the first ball and he (Gayle) played a sort of slog sweep,” Nadeem said. “The ball hit the bottom portion of his bat and he ran a single hitting the ball to deep midwicket. Virat took a single off the next ball which brough Gayle back on strike again. I told myself that I got away since it was just a single, but the third ball of the over I got my confidence back, bowled the chinaman and he was out caught at midwicket - Zaheer bhai took the wicket.”