Danish Kaneria redeemed himself with his five-wicket haul to set up Pakistan’s victory at Kingston, but till the second innings in Jamaica, Kaneria had been thwarted by some brilliant attacking batsmanship by Brian Lara. Twinkle-toed footwork, outstanding hand-eye coordination, and an innate ability to spot, and take full toll of, even a marginal error in line and length helped Lara amass the runs and drive Kaneria to distraction.
Over the last seven months, Kaneria has bowled to some of the best batsmen of spin bowling - he was involved in series against Sri Lanka, Australia and India - and no-one has treated him with quite as much disdain as Lara did (though he spoiled the numbers when he tickled one down the leg side in the second innings in Jamaica). It wasn’t as if Kaneria was bowling badly either - Ramnaresh Sarwan, arguably West Indies’ next-best talent, struggled to read his spin and variations, eking out 15 runs off 72 balls, a rate of 1.25 runs per over.
A comparison of the manner in which the top batsmen from various teams played Kaneria tells the story of just how dominant Lara was. In the home series against Sri Lanka, none of the batsmen managed a strike rate of more than 65 against him; the Australians were a bit better, with Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist managing scoring rates of more than 75 (among batsmen who faced at least 50 balls from him). The Indians struggled to get him away too, as the table below indicates.
BallsRuns/ dismissalsScoring rateBrian Lara133135/ 2101.50Justin Langer 12198/ 280.99Adam Gilchrist8262/ 275.61Wavell Hinds 8764/ 173.56Virender Sehwag195142/ 172.82Sanath Jayasuriya 159101/ 363.52Ricky Ponting222131/59.01Shivnarine Chanderpaul 16891/ 354.17Sachin Tendulkar193101/ 052.33Rahul Dravid 254132/ 351.97Mahela Jayawardene10139/ 238.61VVS Laxman 13339/ 229.32Ramnaresh Sarwan7215/ 120.83(Stats since October 2004, for batsmen who’ve faced at least 50 balls)
The lists hints at something else: Kaneria has had outstanding success at keeping things tight against most right-handers (apart from Virender Sehwag), but he hasn’t quite figured out the art of bowling to a left-hander. Most of the Australian left-handers got him away with a fair degree of success, as did Jayasuriya and even Wavell Hinds. The table below shows how Kaneria has fared against the right and left-handed specialist batsmen and allrounders (Nos. 1 to 7 in a line-up) over the last four years (since September 2001).
Kaneria versus …Runs/ DismissalsAverageScoring rate/ 100 ballsRight-handers1805/ 5532.8246.33Left-handers 1330/ 2945.8659.88(Stats since September 2001, for top seven batsmen in a line-up.)
SOURCE
http://content.cricinfo.com/columns/content/story/210822.html