Magic ball theory beats India

India needed 23 to win. Mohammed Siraj middled a ball, and they lost.

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Middled it. Mohammed Siraj played a perfectly executed backfoot defence to an off-spinning delivery, and the ball could not have found the centre of his blade any better. He was 100% in control of this shot, and did exactly what he set out to do.

It’s just the ball didn’t care. Nothing that happened was normal - this was grassy knoll shit. This was magic ball theory. It should have gone forward, it should have hit his leg, it should have missed leg stump. But somehow, Shoaib Bashir got the right spin off the pitch, the right spin off the bat, the right spin on the first bounce and the right spin on the second bounce.

Shane Warne can have the 1900s, all he did was spin the ball once against Mike Gatting. Bashir spun it four times off the middle of the bat to win a match that India were somehow about to steal.

It takes a certain amount of force to knock the bails off. Often the ball will roll into them, but the spigot doesn’t go out of the groove and so the bails stay on. That could have happened to Mohammed Siraj, and considering what he’d done, it would have been right.

He is not good at batting. He is particularly bad against offspin. Today he was everything you would want. He gets in line against pace, he ensures the ball wouldn’t get to short leg. And he played no wild swipes at Bashir. He delivered an off-drive on a wicket where that seemed almost impossible.

And on the last ball of the day, he got behind a hard-spinning delivery, middled it, and did everything you could ask for a number 11. It hit the very middle of the bat. But as it does, it isn’t quite a straight blade - it’s angled from the impact and the fact Siraj is using perfectly soft hands.

Again, as he was supposed to do. This was right. It was as good as a number eleven could be expected to do.

But his perfectly soft hands mean that even at Bashir’s lack of pace, with a cabbage of a cricket ball, the bat face just angles a little. So the ball should be dropping straight in front of him, but it drops to his left, in the gap between middle and leg stump. Usually he would be standing right there. Instead, he’s moved across his stumps to outside off.

Because this is where he should be standing to ensure his head is over the ball, and if it keeps low it won’t squirt through him.

It’s that technically correct decision that allows him to middle the ball. And it’s that technically correct decision that means when the ball lands in the batter’s footmarks, it can spin back unimpinged.

But even then, it doesn’t spin straight. After hitting near the crease mark, closer to a middle stump line, it spins back - but to the outside of leg. If it had continued on this path, it might never have hit at all. Then the ball spins again on landing a second time, and this one straightens back up.

If the ball had kept its original path, it might have missed. If it had straightened back on the first bounce, it would have hit Siraj’s pads without him having to move.

Instead, Siraj’s foot kicks out when the ball has passed him. On first glance, it looks like he should have kicked, but by the time he realises where the ball is, his boot moves - but it was already too late.

Mohammed Siraj was beaten by the spin off the pitch, the bat, the pitch, and the pitch. He had struggled, fought, battled, worn balls, and done things with the bat that someone of his talent has no right being involved in. He took what should have been an embarrassing loss and made his team believe in a guy who averaged 2.2 against offspin.

He did it all - until he was dismissed by some of the most unlikely magic ball theory nonsense you will ever see. And he didn’t even see it.

All of this happened to Mohammed Siraj. Early in the match he was the protagonist, sometimes when Ravi Jadeja was doing the work he was the watcher. Now he’s neither - he’s just out.

India needed 23 to win. He middled a ball, and they lost.