The dying art of fast bowling

Few modern day bowlers can terroririze opposition batsmen like Jeff Thompson did.

The world of cricket is fast getting depleted of its most majestic breed of species: Fast Bowlers. The sport is beginning to forget about its most potent tool that once adorned its armory. It seems an almost ancient matter when the teams used to be spearheaded by battery of fast bowlers. If we look back into the history of Cricket, we will notice that the fate of a match rested, without exception, on the efficacy of fast bowlers, and their failure meant an almost certain defeat. The enthralling sport we call Cricket has come a long way from its nigh obscure beginnings in some English county to becoming a global phenomenon. The commercialization of Cricket has done wonders to its viability as a professional sport, but has also paved the way for business moguls all across the globe to have a decisive say in sport’s decision-making. Consequently, the decisions that were good for the sport as a whole started to take the back seat vis-à-vis the ones that were considered economically viable.

Now, before my aphorism starts to get questioned, let me expatiate on it!

When Test cricket was at its pinnacle in the seventies, Australian Television magnate Kerry Pecker, in an urge to feed his moribund Nine Television Network with some much needed doze of sport, inoculated the world of cricket with the most potent scepter of greed: moolah. Following a failed discussion with the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) pertaining to procurement of television rights for Australia’s home Test matches, Pecker masterminded the World Series Cricket (WSC) in 1977. Pecker used his great purchasing power to adorn the breakaway league with big names from the international arena with the then English captain Tony Greig at the helm. The great success of the competition made sure that cricketers no longer remain underpaid and that the sport attained a commercial status. Though the star-studded WSC was finally called off in 1979 after a successful second season, with the ACB finally yielding to Pecker’s inexorability, it did however manage to completely rewrite the tenets associated with the sport.

While on one hand, WSC made cricket more competitive as the draconian schedules required much higher levels of fitness and commitment from the players, it also shifted the game’s balance to the entertainment side with the technicalities taking the back seat, thereby sowing seeds for the things to follow. Consequently, night matches became very common in most nations, and one-day cricket became the most widely followed form of the game toppling the supremacy of Test Cricket. Many attribute the exploits of the West Indies cricket team in the 1980s to their stint in the World Series Cricket.

The incessant reformation that’s been going on post WSC in the name of commercialization is absolutely extraneous, and is being done merely to cater to the whims of the business moguls associated with the sport. The acquiescence shown by the governing body has yielded well on the monetary front, but it has also cast a huge blow to the legacy of sport. It started with the curtailing of the five-day game to give way to limited-over internationals. The laws of Cricket were made to take a complete volte face in order to make the game supposedly more engaging for the spectators. The even competition between the bat and ball that the sporty wickets ensured made way for the one-sided battle on docile, batsmen friendly pitches. This lust for moolah has most severely deterred the contingency of fast bowlers in the sport.

We seldom get to see fast bowlers bending their backs to extract bounce and movement off the tracks, which lack both the moisture and the grass needed to encourage the pacers to bowl their hearts out. The splices and edges of bats are made so thick these days that even the mistimed strokes tend to clear the deliberately shortened boundaries. This prejudice against bowlers is further aggravated by the commercially favorable albeit extremely hostile guidelines implemented by the Cricket’s ruling body, International Cricket Council (ICC), such as constraints put on short-pitched bowling, stringent extras rules, powerplays, free hits, over rate criterion, etc. The Cricketing Boards are also least supportive of aspiring pacers, not taking the necessary steps to nurture the talent of those gifted with raw pace and instead inveigling them to cut down on their pace in order to prolong their careers—a ploy to contain the over rate and extras—thereby catering to the desires of ICC. The advent of T20 Cricket has taken this prejudice to the next level with the off-field razzmatazz ruling the rooster and the sport itself losing the limelight.

Brett Lee quit test cricket at 33. Is the art of fast bowling facing a slow death?

Today, we hardly see a steaming Michael Holding bowling a bouncer that ends up hitting the top of the sight screen or a Jeff Thompson delivery defying the speed limits with the batsmen still managing to muster enough courage to hook and pull without the helmet and other protective gear. The handful of express fast bowlers that the sport did manage to produce—primarily the likes of Shoaib Akthar, Brett Lee and Shane Bond—in the recent past suffered the meltdown of the worst kind owing to strenuous tour itineraries that curtailed their careers. Even the medium pacers today have the general tendency to shorten their run-ups and bowl line and length in order to prolong their professional careers. The batting averages are getting more and more impressive while the bowling prospects are getting bleaker and bleaker. With each passing day we see more and more batsmen with the ability to hit through the line with minimal foot-work—in the absence of any movement off the pitch or in the air—tumbling records after records with the bowlers struggling for rythm on unresponsive wickets.

With dusk fast approaching, the onus is upon those at the helm of decision making to take necessary and timely measures to rescue the dying art of fast bowling from the state of shambles that it sees itself in, lest the game of Cricket be robbed of its greatest legacy.

Edited by Sambhav Khetarpal