For people born into royalty, life is very smooth sailing. And even though Brandon’s surname is King, his T20 career has been anything but smooth sailing; it’s been a very rocky road.
At age 24, Brandon was the top run scorer of the 2019 Caribbean Premier League (CPL) season, scoring 496 runs across 12 matches averaging 55.11 striking at 148.94, a major reason for why Shoaib Malik’s captaincy stint with the Guyana Amazon Warriors that season saw him nearly lift the trophy without losing a single game.
Brandon scored a century and three fifties that year, a century which stood 132* runs tall against the Barbados Tridents in Qualifier 1, the highest individual score in the history of the league nearly half a decade later.
And though the Amazon Warriors ended up living up to their “choker” tag yet again, Brandon was rewarded with a call-up to the West Indies team in a series against Afghanistan, an opportunity for the King to live up to his surname and establish himself as the heir to the Universe Boss’ throne, given how high he set the bar in CPL19.
But as though he was lying about his royal heritage all this time, for much of his initial stint with the T20I team, he failed to meet the high bar he set, merely establishing himself as an heir to the bench.
After they toured New Zealand in November 2020, Brandon was ultimately dropped, and across the 11 T20Is he played, he scored 153 runs averaging 15.30 striking at 134.21, with a top score of 43*.
His failures at the international level coincided with a scorching drought in his CPL run-scoring immediately following his breakthrough 2019 season, as though he accidentally hit his head hard on his bed’s headboard in disbelief the night the Amazon Warriors lost yet another final and completely forgot how to bat afterward.
A big reason for this was that he began struggling against spin big time, as seen below.
A fourth of Brandon’s dismissals across these two seasons came against spin, and on top of that, barring chinaman bowling, he struggled to score above a run a ball against spin, a significant weakness in his game teams started noticing and began exploiting to its max.
On top of that, Brandon also had one of the lower balls per dismissal (BPD) for openers against spin during these two seasons.
And in the timeframe of his first 11 T20Is, compared to openers who faced a minimum of 30 balls against spin (Brandon faced 26), he had the worst balls per dismissal.
It was also briefly prevalent during his replacement player stint with Islamabad United in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) leg of the 2021 Pakistan Super League (PSL), where though he faced only 2 balls of spin in Usman Qadir’s leggies, he dismissed Brandon the second ball.
His 3-match stint was also average overall, as despite starting off with a 22-ball 46 on PSL debut, he followed it up with 5 runs off 7 balls and 18 runs off 16 balls respectively.
But despite consistently mediocre performances, at age 26, the King found himself given another opportunity to become the heir of the Windian T20 opening throne, as he was recalled for their tour of Pakistan in December 2021, just a bit over a year since being dropped.
And miraculously, the punt taken on him paid off in dividends, for the King blood in Brandon suddenly surged through his veins like a big rush of adrenaline, scoring 477 runs across 17 matches averaging 31.8 striking at 124.86, with a top score of 68 and 5 fifties to his name leading up to the CPL22 season.
And amid the CPL22 buildup, Brandon moved to his home franchise the Jamaica Tallawahs and paid homage to the iconic Wizard of Oz chant, “There’s no place like home,” for the King once again finally met the high bar he set back in 2019, playing a pivotal role in the Tallawahs winning their first trophy in 6 years, laying the demons of Tarouba 2019 to rest, finally lifting his first CPL trophy at 28-years-old.
Brandon was also able to lift the trophy as the tournament’s top run scorer for the second time, scoring 422 runs across 13 matches averaging 38.36 striking at 135.25, with a century and 2 fifties and a top score of 104 against his former franchise.
He’s continued to show better consistency in T20Is since last season as well, but after all, that’s transpired in the King’s career and as he turns 29 in December, the question to ponder is just how high and what his ceiling is exactly.
We’ll look to answer this by comparing his techniques from CPL19 and CPL22 and interpreting his T20 and T20I numbers in two halves.
Brandon’s pace trigger movement has remained the same from CPL19: dragging his backfoot to between his middle and leg stump followed by closing the gap between his front and back foot entirely, a trigger movement that one might say is somewhat like Fawad Alam and Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s.
A trigger movement allows a batter’s muscles to be free moving, so he does not feel stuck or rigid within the crease and also allows them to get into an action position from where they can explode into the ball and potentially impart more force onto the ball.
Former England international Kevin Pietersen says that the reason he had a trigger movement was “to give me that split second of an opportunity to get myself into line and also read length and be in a position to strike when the bowler delivers the ball.”
It's the same case with his pace neutral position as with the pace trigger movement: it continues to be the same as from CPL19.
His upper body-lower body position is closed entirely, which allows for a higher X-Factor Stretch since it can be said energy is conserved in such a position, though at the cost of creating an imbalance at the crease with his feet, this closed.
The X-Factor Stretch is the difference between the hip-shoulder separations at the point of downswing initiation and the point of contact, a quantity positively correlated with the range achieved.
Being closed kneed likely also helps Brandon to adapt against both inswing and outswing.
And against spin, while he’s never had any trigger movement, there’s been a change in the neutral position.
Brandon’s upper body-lower body combination in 2019 is close-chested and open-kneed, complemented by an extreme side-on position which helped acquire him a high X-Factor Stretch, as it means he’s ideally suited to give the ball airtime, evidenced by his season strike rate of 158.9 against spin that season.
Last season, the upper body-lower body combination was changed to closed entirely, which meant that his X-Factor Stretch was even higher, reflected by his spin strike rate of 158.21 and his high score of 75 against spin in an inning, that being his ton against the Amazon Warriors, compared to 59 in 2019.
However, he hasn’t exactly improved against spin exactly as this may suggest, with struggles against legspin very much prevalent as explained in this thread.
If you compare his T20 career at two junctions (the first junction being CPL19 and his first 11 T20Is with the second junction being CPL22 and the 29 T20Is he’s played since comeback), the pattern from CPL20-21 discussed earlier emerges: he’s generally really bad against spin (especially leg spin), though he is good against pace.
First junction:
Medium pace: 32.5 | 140.69
Fast pace: 23.5 | 162.06
Away-spin (RWS and SLA): 81 | 145.94
In-spin (OB and LWS): 28.75 | 153.33
Legspin: - | 127.9
Second junction:
Medium pace: 28.3 | 129.81
Fast pace: 32.33 | 122.78
Away-spin (RWS and SLA): 45.63 | 125.86
In-spin (OB and LWS): 73 | 147.97
Legspin: 29.2 | 117.74
So with all of this information, we can gauge a good estimate of the King’s ceiling, that being his role as an opener is that of a pace hitter, and as indicated by a lack of trigger movement and numbers against spin, is not at all comfortable playing it, for which he needs shielding at the other end.
However, his T20I balls per dismissal against spin since his return to the national team show that he’s improved substantially in not giving his wicket away.
But at the Tallawahs this upcoming season for the West Indies, shielding is a necessity he will not at all have.
Tallawahs have recently signed Alex Hales as a replacement for Naveen-ul-Haq, for whom just like Brandon, spin is a matchup made in hell, making them a negative complement pair that can be bogged down with such matchups.
The same is the case for their other opening options, Kennar Lewis and USA’s Steven Taylor, a big cause for concern going into the season, as smarter teams would most definitely look to exploit this loophole against the defending champions with powerplay spin.
For the Windies, Brandon has primarily opened with Kyle Mayers, whose spin gears is poor just like his, dismissed by spin 7 of his 13 IPL matches this season, a major headache the West Indies will ideally have to take care of with the 2024 T20 World Cup looming closer in the Caribbean.
And though Brandon has been demoted to one down and #4 every now and then to accommodate openers such as Evin Lewis and Johnson Charles, it’d be a move that’s very likely to backfire in the T20 World Cup, as typical entry points for those batters come in the middle overs, where spin is more often bowled, and a lot of it is expected to be bowled in this phase given the nature of Caribbean pitches.
But regardless, across both teams, Brandon is a first-choice opening option, with his role being to maximize the powerplay by taking on the pacers to build a platform the rest of the batting lineup can further elevate.
And to answer the topic of this article, as things currently stand at this time, yes, the King is most certainly a late heir to his throne, but as the saying goes, it’s better late than never.