He ended the night with four wickets, but let’s begin at the beginning, and the five balls Akeal Hosein bowled before he took his first wicket.
Here he was, left-arm fingerspinner bowling to Quinton de Kock, a destructive left-hand opener, with a new ball in his hand, on a pitch where Chennai Super Kings (CSK) had scored 207.
Here he was, one match after CSK had left him out because of this very match-up. Matthew Short, a batter who bowls a bit, had played ahead of him simply because he bowls offspin, and CSK were up against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) one of the most destructive left-left opening pairs in the world.
Hosein was back in CSK’s attack now, back doing the job he does in T20 leagues around the world and for West Indies: bowl in the powerplay, and use his seam-up arm ball – inswinger to the right-hander, awayswinger to the left-hander – to try and keep things tight.
The plan was clear enough: bowl from around the wicket to de Kock, and both angle and swerve the ball across him, away from his hitting arc, but without offering too much room.
It’s a tricky task, requiring exceptional line control, and Hosein’s second ball was slightly off-target, pitching outside leg stump and allowing de Kock to target his favourite area – backward square leg – with a ruthless swivel-sweep for six.
Either side of that, however, Hosein was on the money. Quick, on a good length, restricting de Kock to punches and stabs to fielders in the off-side inner ring. Dot, six, dot, dot, single. Seven runs off five balls, and excellent skill, control and composure to recover from a bad start.
And now he was up against the right-handed Danish Malewar, a rookie in his second IPL game. Now Hosein had room to be a little more expansive.
Over the last 30 years or so, spin bowling has just become quicker and quicker. Hosein typically operates in the early 90s (kph), and that would have been considered seriously quick in the 1990s. Now it’s the stock speed most spinners bowl, and the truly quick ones – Varun Chakravarthy, for example – operate in the high 90s and early 100s.
One day… I’d like to become a player like him… @imjadeja pic.twitter.com/VLb9DRwf66
— Akeal Hosein (@AHosein21) October 16, 2013
Against this backdrop, the ball Hosein now bowled looked exaggeratedly slow, even though it wasn’t. This wasn’t slow like the slow end of the Mitchell Santner spectrum – earlier in the evening, the Mumbai Indians (MI) left-arm spinner had occasionally dropped down to around 78kph. This ball from Hosein clocked 86kph.
This was that rare and beautiful sight: a ball that is objectively fairly quick but still loops above the batter’s eyeline before dipping wickedly. This was the kind of ball that draws batters forward and leaves them groping. High revs, with the seam pointing to slip, achieving that sweet spot between sidespin and overspin.
Malewar pushed at the ball, well in front of his body, with his bat face closed. It was almost as if he had spent all his time leading up to this ball preparing to face an arm ball. This was the classic left-arm orthodox stock ball: it dipped and ripped to catch the outside edge.
Trajectory, revolutions and length. These three qualities combined in a manner just as deadly in Hosein’s next over, when Naman Dhir, sensing a ball he could step-hit over the top, ended up swishing through thin air as the ball dipped and broke past him to hit the top of middle stump. At 90kph, this was even more deceptive in its trajectory. Dhir may have sensed he had time to get a full stride into the ball; it was merely an illusion.
Back in 2013, Hosein had tweeted this:
Hosein now plays for CSK – Ravindra Jadeja’s team for 12 seasons – and his two new-ball wickets against MI, particularly the one of Dhir, had a distinctly Jadeja-esque flavour. They’re different bowlers in many respects, but the thing that has made Jadeja one of the greatest left-arm spinners of all time is his ability to give the ball a rip while bowling at high pace and with extreme accuracy. Hosein has never played Test cricket, and has played no first-class cricket since 2022, but he shares these typically red-ball virtues with Jadeja.
On TV commentary, Dale Steyn – who worked as bowling coach at SRH when Hosein was part of that squad – spoke of the difficulty of taking the gloves and keeping to Hosein in the nets, because of his ability to keep bowling a bail-trimming length. That length is a Jadeja specialty.
Jadeja, however, seldom bowls in the powerplay in T20s, and particularly not when left-handers are at the crease. For Hosein, they are just descriptions of his day job. He has bowled more balls to left-hand batters in T20s than any other left-arm fingerspinner since the start of 2025, with 223 of those 430 balls coming in the powerplay.
It’s no coincidence that Imad Wasim, another prolific user of the arm ball, ranks second and third in those two lists. What Hosein has that Imad doesn’t is the ability to bowl a sharply turning stock ball as well, and genuinely test the right-hander’s outside edge.
These skills, combined with his pace and exacting length, should make Hosein an automatic pick for CSK, but selection is seldom that simple, particularly when it comes to that tricky intersection of fingerspinner and overseas player.
In that sense, it was understandable that CSK went with Short rather than Hosein against Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head. And they may have even been vindicated if they hadn’t overplayed their hand in the powerplay; Short conceded just 13 in his first two overs, and 25 in his third.
Hosein’s performance against MI should, however, tell CSK that they shouldn’t shy away from picking him against heavily left-handed line-ups. And using him against left-handers in all phases.
When Hosein came back for his third over, Tilak Varma was just beginning to gather some momentum after a slow start, and had hit three fours in his last eight balls.
Then, after hitting a mistimed slap to deep point off Hosein’s first ball – pushed through on the shorter side of a length, and angling away from his hitting arc – Tilak yelled in frustration as he ran his single. He hadn’t struck the ball cleanly at all, and replays revealed this could have had something to do with the way Hosein had bowled it. The seam was scrambled, so it had a chance of landing either on the seam or on the leather, and of reacting differently to the pitch in each case.
Fifth ball of the over, and Tilak was back on strike. Once again, Hosein fired the ball across him with the seam scrambled. This time, Tilak tried to hit against the angle, and swipe into the leg side. This time, the ball possibly skidded on a touch low and cannoned into the stumps off the bottom edge.
“I’ve been trying to pick the coaches’ and players’ brains on red soil, black soil, what it does, which deliveries work,” Hosein said in his post-match press conference. “I was pretty happy with how I went about it today, because it can be a bit challenging if you don’t adapt to the conditions quickly. Some deliveries come on a bit slower, some surfaces react differently. It’s about just trying to do your homework as fast as possible.”
Hosein had certainly done his homework for this Wankhede Stadium surface. It was unusually spin-friendly – the spinners took nine wickets in the match, a record for the venue the IPL – and he had used it as an opportunity to showcase his full range. He had swung his arm ball and used it as a defensive option against left-handers in the powerplay. He had bowled his stock ball with loop and overspin and got it to dip and bite against the right-handers. Then, coming up against another left-hander with an older ball, he had found another way to exploit the vagaries of the surface. He had bowled an exacting length throughout.
Hosein has shown these skills in T20s all around the world, but he had waited a long time to unveil them in the IPL. He had played just one match for SRH in 2023, his debut season, and gone unsold at the next two auctions. Now, playing his third match for CSK and his fourth overall in the tournament, he may finally have announced himself.
