INTERVIEW | Mayank Agarwal speaks of his high white-ball strike rate, views on analytics and more

Express News Service

At a time when Indian batters have looked at winning the Orange Cap as a means of breaking through the national white-ball setup, Mayank Agarwal is an outlier.

He admits that he has taken a conscious decision on keeping an eye on his strike rate while playing in the Indian Premier League (IPL). That kind of shows.

Among batters who regularly open or come in at No 3, the Punjab Kings lad is the only one to have scored at over 140 in each of the last three seasons.

He explains why he pays special attention to that aspect of his game. In a chat with this daily, he also gets intimate with match-ups, his spin-hitting prowess and the challenges of being a batter in South African conditions. Excerpts:

As an India international, what do you work on in the Ranji Trophy?

Honestly, going into a Ranji Trophy game, I don’t look to work on anything. It is still India’s premier domestic competition and it’s not about an international player going to get some kind of practice. It’s about going there, scoring runs and helping your team win matches.  

You are someone who has always played Ranji Trophy whenever you have been available. When it wasn’t around last year, what did you do for your red-ball practice?

See, I don’t look at Ranji as red-ball practice. It’s a serious, premier competition. And we are playing there to win that competition. We do have a lot of facilities, there is the National Cricket Academy where you can go and play… I also work on my red-ball skills with RX (Muralidhar) sir in his academy.

IPL in the UAE, Tests against New Zealand and South Africa, now Ranji… you have played in multiple formats, conditions and bubbles in the last 4-5 months. What were the challenges?

Very grateful that even in this condition, we are able to play cricket. That the Ranji Trophy happening during this time I think is a great thing.

A lot of the domestic cricketers are looking forward to that… credit to the BCCI for making domestic cricket happen again.

When it comes to bubble life, I’m grateful for the opportunity to play even though it’s in a bubble. I’m looking at it as an opportunity.

After playing against New Zealand in India, you had the series in South Africa, two very different conditions. How do you adapt?

We had the Test series against New Zealand in India. I was very happy with the way I batted, did score a lot of runs. We did prepare very well for the series against South Africa.

But the conditions are different. There is a lot more bounce, a lot more seam and there’s a lot more help for the pacers. We were well prepared and I thought it was a hard-fought series.

Can you talk a bit about the technical aspects… the challenge of playing an Ajaz Patel in the first morning in Mumbai and Marco Jansen at Centurion?

(Laughs) I’m not somebody who makes too many technical adjustments during the season. But yeah, you have to make minor adjustments. When there’s more bounce, you want to be upright, you want to try and get on top of the bounce.

When you are playing spin in India, it’s about using your feet more, try and get closer to the ball so that you don’t allow it to spin much and then you use your crease when you play off the back foot.

In South Africa, you have to actually change the game plan in terms of how you are going to attack them, what are the shots you are going to be playing and be very disciplined in sticking to the shots you want to play.  

Among the current crop of Indian batters, you are one of the best against the spinners. How did you develop that?

As Indian players, we do grow up playing a lot of spin. It’s something that I have practised a lot.

Even though I’m an opening batter, to make big runs in India, you definitely need to play a lot of spin. I practised a lot with RX (Muralidharan) sir in his academy.

We pick out a mud patch, then he throws a lot of balls and I practice playing spin turn and spin bounce and all of that. There is a lot of turn and bounce on those muddy surfaces.  

Coming to the white-ball aspect of your game, at a time when a few Indian batters have prioritised winning the Orange Cap, you have focused on strike rates. Is that a conscious decision?
 
Yeah, it’s something I look at consciously. For me, it depends on the role that you have been given. But also, as a person who bats up the order, if I play in the middle overs, I would look to dominate the bowling because that helps the team.

I feel it puts the team in a much better situation for the batters who come in next. They do have a little more time to settle in. I don’t look at ‘runs, runs as such’ but I do look at more in terms of ‘what am I doing, how am I contributing to the team’s success’?

I would look at a 15-ball 30, a 15-ball 35 as important as a 70 or an 80 not out because if those scores are helping you win, then that’s all I look for… they should be helping the team win.

Would you say that that’s your best white-ball skill, going after both pace and spin from the first ball?

I wouldn’t say that I go after pacers and spinners from the first ball. But definitely, I do calculate and I do look to put the pressure back on the bowlers and that’s one of my strengths.

Picking match-ups, studying data… are you into that?

I do look at bowlers and what skills they have but I’m not very big on match-ups. Data is good but I don’t blindly go by it. If on a given day, if a right-hand batter is to take a chance against a left-arm spinner or a leg-spinner, as a right-hand batter, I have to do it.

Because it’s what the situation demands and I cannot think about myself. Definitely the risk factor, awareness and smartness are considered in that do we actually need to take that chance or if you have a left-hander who is set… you know you can probably mix and match.

With that aspect, it’s more about awareness and cricketing smarts than pure match-ups and blindly going by numbers.

Considering the schedule — just one out of nine Tests away from the subcontinent in the next 12 months — will there be a focus on practising on spinning surfaces. Do you prepare like that?  

I don’t really think too far ahead. I know that in the next three months, these two tournaments (Sri Lanka Tests and Indian Premier League) are there and I am working hard for that. As the time comes, we will have enough time to prepare… I don’t want to go ahead of myself by thinking about 5-6-7-8 months in advance and forget about what’s happening in the next 2-3 months.