On Thursday evening, Akeal Hosein seemed to channel Dr. Doom at the Wankhede Stadium. The Chennai Super Kings left-arm spinner drew inspiration from his favorite Marvel Comics supervillain to wreak havoc on Mumbai Indians. His decisive spell of 4/17 dismantled MI’s celebrated batting order with control and precision. Former India spinner Venkatapathy Raju was effusive in his praise. “He is a specialist who relishes bowling in the Powerplay. With over 250 wickets in this format, it comes down to subtle variations in pace and clever use of lengths. Batters are not able to read him,” Raju told TOI.That deception and guile were evident early. Batters usually brace for Hosein’s arm ball in the Powerplay. But on a gripping Wankhede pitch, the spinner from Laventille, Trinidad, flipped the script and slowed it up, teasing MI opener Danish Malewar to find the outside edge.“His real weapon is the way he uses the crease,” Raju explained. “From wide of it, he generates drift even with the new ball. It creates angles to bring it in or take it away, without any visible change in action.” It was this clever manipulation that foxed MI’s No.3 Naman Dhir. Hosein opened with an arm ball that nearly breached Dhir’s defenses. He followed it up with a slower delivery and then bowled one that gripped and turned at 90.6 kmph. Dhir was beaten.Hosein wasn’t done. He conned Tilak Varma with a scrambled seam variation, and Suryakumar Yadav was the final piece in his carefully constructed puzzle. Throughout the evening, MI batsmen were second-guessing Hosein, unsure of his pace, lengths and trajectory.“In this format, variation and intelligence are everything,” Raju added. “As a left-arm spinner myself, I feel happy to see Hosein bowling so well.For Hosein, who turned 33 on Saturday, the cricketing intelligence was forged while growing up in Laventille, a crime-scarred Port-of-Spain suburb. It was a tough neighborhood marked by gang wars, where survival demands you to think on your feet.Before he turned 16, Hosein debuted for Queen’s Park Cricket Club, an institution steeped in history, once largely inaccessible to people from his background.
