The Infallible Resilience of Devon Conway

True to his personality, when Devon Conway came out to open the batting in his debut Test match at Lord’s, he showed no signs of being ungrateful. Perhaps that is the last thing a player, starting his international career at Lord’s, ought to feel after finally breaking down the doors of playing at the biggest […]
 
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The Infallible Resilience of Devon Conway

True to his personality, when Devon Conway came out to open the batting in his debut Test match at Lord’s, he showed no signs of being ungrateful. Perhaps that is the last thing a player, starting his international career at Lord’s, ought to feel after finally breaking down the doors of playing at the biggest of stages. But that feeling of ungratefulness wouldn’t have been entirely inappropriate, even if it were present at all.

Opening the batting in English conditions is hard. Nobody would blame you, especially in your debut Test match, for getting a slow start, scoring a pretty 20 or 30, before you are invariably gobbled up by the veteran duo of Stuart Borad and James Anderson, if not anybody else, for breakfast.

Heck, if you are lucky enough to be part of a team whose bowlers can eke out a first-innings lead in a low or moderate scoring game, you might also just get through to some of the pundits highlighting how those runs made the difference in the end. But we all know what actually transpired in Conway’s case.

Also ReadDevon Conway and other South Africa-born New Zealand cricketers

Desptie the historic evening we are coming of from, it is worth diving into the indefatigable odds that he actually managed to defy through his robust technique, when he scored a double-hundred on debut and has not looked back since. This is strictly about the odds he defied on the field. If you want a deeper dive into how he staked everything to move from his home in South Africa to New Zealand, look no further than here

The Infallible Resilience of Devon Conway

The puzzle of opening the batting in International Test cricket has been hard to crack. In fact, as the numbers correctly suggest, batting in Test cricket, in general, over the past 5 years, has been at its toughest in the 21st century. The evolution of the depth of teams’ bowling attacks, teams maximizing the advantage of their home conditions, etc have been among the primary contributing factors to this trend.

Thanks to the evolution of analytics within cricket, we can get an estimate of how much of a chance away batters have, on average, of going past the score of 25, in England over the last 5 years. I am still at the nascent stages of learning to model probabilities but it is quite clear that, if we were to somehow account for a batsman on debut and a batsman who hardly has any experience in opening the batting even in domestic cricket, the odds would slip by at the very least 5-7 percentage points.

The Infallible Resilience of Devon Conway

Devon Conway has had a superb start to his international career for New Zealand

Even this might turn out to be an understatement of the estimate but it doesn’t matter. Devon Conway dug a trench so deep at his crease, almost every time he came out to bat in his Test career, that he is almost daring us to see if we can find those odds in the labyrinth of those depths. Perhaps it might be easier to just give in and actually focus upon what he gets right while batting. 

Also ReadSouth Africa born Devon Conway earns New Zealand central contract before making International debut

As the best in the business would attest, taking wickets, espeically of specialist top-order batsmen in Test cricket, is a difficult art to master. The three key defining features of this art are planning, consistency and setting the batsmen up. Far too often, the wicket balls are looked at in isolation and people have a tendency to grumble “why couldn’t he have bowled that before, huh?” While this sentiment might have had quite a bit of truth to it before, the vast availability of data and their diligent use by cricketing professionals has changed that.

Devon Conway dominated English conditions in his debut Test match

So, given New Zealand had announced the decision to open with Conway a day before the match, England’s plans wouldn’t have needed much tweaking considering the recent success of the vastly experienced Stuart Broad against left-handed batters with the Dukes ball. But Conway repeatedly countered England’s plans against him with a sort of fluency and preparedness which felt quite unreal yet extremely pleasing to the eye, as is the case with left-handed batters.

When the English bowlers bowled full and straight to him in the first session, he responded accordingly by meeting those balls head-on by driving them straight down the ground and scoring 20% of his runs in the straight V (source).

In the second session, as the ball got older and the bowlers adjusted to a good-length with some swing on offer, Conway adjusted accordingly and scored only 8% of his runs in straight V during that session. Moreover, once set, he repeatedly forced Broad and Anderson, vastly experienced and adept at inducing the outside edge from around the wicket to left handers. 

This battle was quite fascinating and held the key to understanding the subtle adjustments Conway makes, while facing quality fast-bowling, which have made him stand out so far. While facing right-handed fast-bowling from around the wicket, his stance opens up slightly and we can see that ever so slight Chanderpaulian shift he makes in the angle of his body so his head is positioned directly from where the ball is coming in from that angle.

Also ReadIs Devon Conway someone India must watch out for?

Chanderpaul took this method to the extreme by keeping his head pinned on the bowler and getting across at the last moment, Conway just took a very miniscule page out of his book to not be vulnerable against the ball coming in through the angle and moving ever so slightly, either in the air or off the pitch, to take his outside edge, as has happened to many a left-handers in their careers. This was also the case when he faced Ishant Sharma in the final. There might have been quite a bit of deliveries which beat him but we have rarely seen those balls just take the slightest of nicks or have him squared up because of the angle.

Quite obviously, right-arm quicks have also proven to not expose any sort of vulnerability he might have from that angle so far. In fact, the most emphatic declaration against any sort of vulnerability from that angle was an exquisite drive he played off Anderson’s bowling from over the wicket, which is bound to remain indelibly etched in your memory once you watch it here

In a sport where the use of data and analytics has already become an indispensable part of the process of planning for successful teams, people will undoubtably be turning to figure out how to get the better of him. In fact, a bit of a technical flaw is already apparent i.e. he has the tendency to play away from his body and outside the line which have brought a lot of inside-edges but none have gone on to hit the stumps yet.

Especially after yesterday’s victory, the clamour for seeing his mettle tested in Asian conditions has only reached a new crescendo but so has the excitement about how wonderfully amazing it might turn out to be when we once again get to see Conway overcoming the odds. With hindsight and some extrapolation using inductive logic, it seems like it would be utterly foolish to bet against Conway battling the toughest of batting conditions and emerging unscathed, like he has in life and on the field. For now, he and the entire New Zealand contingent deserve to bask all the glory coming their way.