Two images might immediately come to mind. You could imagine him running with the new ball and swinging it back and forth. Or you could think of him bowling in Death Overs and dismissing Yorkers who attack the base of the stumps or hug the wide guideline outside the stump.
It is a series of pitches with either a stiff bounce, uncertain bounce, uncertain pace or various combinations of these ingredients, and of the 57 wickets taken by fast bowlers from both sides, 31 came from short or good length balls, according to Cricinfo data.
However, it might surprise you that Arshdeep is the second most frequent user of the short ball, with 47.30%. He bowled more often than bowlers one would more easily associate with this mode of attack, such as the towering Kyle Jamieson (47.10%) and Jacob Duffy (46.67%) and the speedy Matthew Fisher (41.67%).
The reason Arshdeep dug it as often as he did was because he caused a lot of discomfort by doing so. Brar once again leads the way when it comes to this metric, with batters achieving just a 58.10 control percentage against him when he has bowled the shorter lengths, and Arshdeep hasn’t been far behind, at 60.
New Zealand were 64 for 1 in their chase of 210, with their second pair of wickets looking set at the crease, when Arshdeep sent Will Young on his way with a perfectly executed bouncer – crossing the left-arm batter and finishing over the right shoulder – which he failed to keep down with the hook.
As is so often the case when Arshdeep bats, the ball seems to reach the batter quicker than expected. This was certainly the case late in the match when Mitchell Santner, captain and New Zealand’s last hope when they were six points and 74 runs from victory, defended awkwardly at Arshdeep and received a blow to the wrist.
There’s something about the way Arshdeep finishes his action, dashing through the crease and delivering with a quick arm whip, that must make it difficult for batters to pick up his short ball.
Iyer communicated the latter part of his response through gesture as much as speech, and it seemed like he was perhaps referring to batters missing obvious cues from Arshdeep’s charging and delivery action to get into position early to deal with the short ball.
And while this ODI series was the perfect showcase for Arshdeep’s short ball, it also showcased another weapon: his swinging seam ball. He used it skillfully in all phases of the game, usually making it leave the right-hander and pinching it into the left-hander, and usually to accentuate his original left-arm angle. This was particularly effective when bowling with the new ball, creating uncertainty in the hitters’ minds as they braced for the ball swinging toward the right-hander and away from the left-hander.
He also used the swinging seam when the ball stopped swinging, and on Sunday it brought him two of his three wickets: left-hander Nick Kelly, off the inside edge while hitting with an angled bat at the one that deflected into him, and right-hander Kristian Clarke, caught behind as he drove against the one that left him.
It would have pleased Arshdeep and India immensely if Clarke’s wicket had come from the corner of the wicket: he used that angle extensively on Sunday, delivering 23 of his 43 balls to the right-handers on that side of the stumps.
“I think he’s a very skilled bowler, and he showed that throughout this series,” Santner said of Arshdeep in his post-match press conference. “We know what he can do with the new ball, obviously swinging it, but crossing (the right hitter) with the ball from three-quarter (seam) as well.
“And throughout the series, when everyone played short and made sure it was the right height and line, that was a problem for both teams. So I guess that was our game plan down the middle with our seamers against the Indian players, and I think we probably didn’t play the short ball as well as we could have throughout the series, knowing that we get a lot of that here. But the well-directed bumpers were a challenge throughout the series.
Arshdeep is India’s highest wicket-taker in T20Is and has played over 100 matches in the format, but he was far from a 50-over regular until recently. Since his debut in November 2022 until the end of 2025, he had played only 14 ODIs.
But since the end of last year’s Champions Trophy – he was a non-playing member of the Indian team in that tournament – he has become something of an ODI mainstay, playing more matches (14) than any other Indian bowler and taking the most wickets (24) with Prasidh Krishna. And of all Indian bowlers with at least ten wickets during this period, he has the best average (25.16) and second-best economy rate (5.37) behind spinner Axar Patel (4.48).
It’s no coincidence that all of this happened as Arshdeep became the most complete version of himself he’s ever been.
Karthik Krishnaswamy is deputy editor at Cricinfo
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