Motie aiming to reinvent the art of left arm spin as he hopes to make himself indispensable to West Indies cricket.
Gudakesh Motie looks to reinvent what it means to be a left-arm spinner.
A typical spinner is not Gudakesh Motie. The thirty-year-old’s main ability is left-arm fingerspin, but he can also use that arm to bowl wristspin, which turns the ball away from left-handers and denies them a beneficial matchup. In Guyana’s Global Super League earlier this year, videos showing him bowling left-arm wristspin to left-handers went viral.
In order to stay up with the rapid advancement of T20, Motie is developing his range and skill set. “[Left-arm wristspin] is something I’ve been working on for quite a long time now,” Motie said on the sidelines of a spin-centric camp at the Super Kings Academy in Chennai earlier this month, ahead of West Indies’ tour of Bangladesh. “I think I’m not perfect with it yet and I still have a lot of work to do. That’s something I want to go in the nets and work on, so that I can get it and use it whenever I’m under pressure or bowling to a left-hander.”
Motie considers himself a strike bowler in T20, regardless of whether he is bowling to a left- or right-hander. He is also supported by the numbers. He has taken 118 wickets in 104 innings at a strike rate of 17.7 in his four years in the format, which is comparable to top T20 spinners like Rashid Khan (17.0) and Noor Ahmad (17.3) and better than fellow West Indians Sunil Narine (23.1) and Akeal Hosein (20.60).
At Amazon Warriors in the CPL and the Global Super League, Motie has had veteran Tahir as a sounding board. “Imran is always there to pass on his knowledge to me, so I try to use him as best as possible,” he said. “Whenever we are training, I look at him, look at what he’s doing differently and ask him a lot of questions.”
Additionally, Motie contributes the traditional abilities of a fingerspinner with a left arm. He has the ability to toss the ball about freely and aggressively, defying batters to pursue him. In the Lord’s Test last year, Motie got one to fizz out of the footmarks and knock out middle stump after Ben Stokes attempted to whip him hard into the leg side. At the time, Stokes nodded his acknowledgement at that ball.
Despite being rested for the most recent two-match Test series in India, Motie is still an important component of the West Indies’ preparations for the T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka next year.
West Indies is in the midst of a major cricket blockbuster: the T20 World Cup is the main ICC event in 2026, and the team’s current white-ball tour of Bangladesh will be followed by an all-format tour of New Zealand. During this hectic time for them, Motie’s form and multifaceted abilities may be crucial to their chances, particularly in the white-ball game.