DHAKA — Spinners, once considered irrelevant in hit-and-run cricket, will play a pivotal role when the World Twenty20 reaches the business end with the first of two semifinals in Dhaka Thursday. Among the top eight wicket-takers in the elite Super-10 round, six are spinners with South Africa's leggie Imran Tahir leading the pack with 11 wickets in four games. Defending champion the West Indies, which clashes with Sri Lanka Thursday in a repeat of the 2012 final, boasts two prolific slow bowlers in Samuel Badree and Sunil Narine. The duo shared six wickets as the Caribbean stars demolished Pakistan by 84 runs in the last league match Tuesday to qualify for the semifinals. Sri Lanka has an ace up its sleeve in veteran left-armer Rangana Herath, whose sensational figures of 3.3-2-3-5 destroyed New Zealand in Chittagong Monday. The second semifinal Friday between unbeaten India and South Africa could also boil down to a spinners' showdown between Tahir and Indian pair Amit Mishra and Ravichandran Ashwin. Leg-spinner Mishra's nine-wicket haul in four games has been matched by off-break bowler Ashwin's seven wickets, helping India to become the only team to win all four Super-10 matches. “The stats speak for themselves,” said West Indies all-rounder Dwayne Bravo. “It's good to have two of the best in our team, but all the other sides too have good spinners.” The West Indies starts with the advantage of having played all its matches at the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium in Dhaka, the venue for the knock-out rounds, while Sri Lanka comes in from Chittagong. Sri Lanka will be wary of two destructive finishers in Bravo and skipper Darren Sammy, who flattened Australia and Pakistan with massive big hits late in the innings. “Its a game we were born to play,” said Bravo. “We just want to go there and entertain cricket fans and give them their money's worth. We play hard, but play fair.” Sammy is confident that his side can achieve what no other team has done in the history of the World Twenty20 — defend the title. Sammy said his side was ready to make history. “We left the Caribbean with that motivating factor for us,” he said. “It's something which no team has done before and we are confident that we can do that if we play the brand of cricket we played in the last three games.” Sammy said facing Herath would not be a problem. “The make-up of our side allows the guys like (Dwayne) Smith and (Chris) Gayle to go hard at the top, so we don't mind the left-arm spinner and hopefully we don't play him (Herath) like New Zealand did.” — Agencies
