Varieties of pace bowling

Pace bowling is not just about running in hard and throwing the ball down the wicket. Its an intricate, thrilling art that thrives on variations, skill and accuracy. This article is aimed to provide youngsters with the basic skills of fast, swing bowling with videos of some of the International greats to illustrate. After acquiring the fundamentals, like developing bowling muscles (back, chest and shoulder), perfecting a simple run-up and a good follow-through ayoung fast bowler has to pick up the nuances of the various types of wicket-taking balls. Simply put theres the outswinger, inswinger, the cutters, the yorker, the bouncer, the reverse-swinger, the slower-ball, the reverse-swinging yorker and nowadays even the slower-bouncer. But it wont just do to learn how to bowl them. Skilled fast bowlers whove played for long periods at the top level, know when to use the variations giventhe context of the game. Following, are the few very basic types of bowling techniques and with a bit of illustration and a short discussion ofthe history.

#1 The Outswinger

The conventional swingers are tried when the red cherry or the white ball are still new.

For the outswinger the following things need to be kept in mind:

Hold the shiny side of the ball towards the batsman.

• Point the seam towards second-slip or else keep the seam straight and shape your wrist towards the slips.
• Try to open your chest in your run-up and in your follow through make sure your right arm ends outside your left knee.
• Keep in mind that what really provides good-swing is a straight seam and a great wrist position, so at the time of release use your fingers and wrist for the final thrust that adds the requisite back-spin to the ball.
• The final point of contact with the ball: your middle finger.

If properly mastered the outswinger can be a great wicket-taking delivery. While the ideal length for a pace-bowler is always the length from where the ball will go on to hit the top of off-stump, the ideal line for the out-swinger is around the middle or off-stump. The dream line for the out-swing bowler is where the ball pitches around off making the batsman play it and then just leaves him to take the outside edge.

If the ball can be made to land perfectly on the seam then the nip away is really sharp. While most modern bowlers worth their salt in International cricket move the ball both ways, there are some who’re more famous for the natural away movement their actions provide them. Dale Steyn is known for his ability to bowl outswingers at great pace, and for medium fast – James Anderson, S Sreesanth and Dominic Cork are some of the best of our times.

Observe in this video, Steyn sets Pujara up who was playing well. He bowls short at him outside off to keep him planted inside the crease, then bowls a well-directed fast outswinger that lures him into driving. The ball that takes Michael Vaughan – is an uplayable outswinger, a ripper that snarled away from leg to desecrate the England captain’s off-stump. The ball that James Anderson cleans up Brendon Mccullum with is the most perfect example of outswing you’ll ever see. The late movement fools the batsman in playing for the middle-stump line underlining the importance of a nice high-arm action and beautifully positioned wrists for generating last-moment swing.

#2 The Inswinger

For the Inswing ball:

• Hold the shiny side of the ball away from the batsman.
• Point the seam either towards the batsman or towards fine leg.
• Your run-up should be less open-chested and in the follow through your right arm should go past the stumps.
• Again try to land the ball on the seam and cock your wrists nicely towards the direction of swing to provide the thrust behind the ball.
• The final point of contact for the outswinger should be your index finger.

For bowlers bowling at great pace bringing the ball in is a bit unusual and so if you’re able to do that early in the innings that gives you a great weapon. Ishant Sharma and Makhaya Ntini did that from a great height causing constant problems for some of the best right-handers around the world. Allan Donald was one of the best exponents of the art, and he did it at great pace. From a bygone era you had – Imran Khan and Kapil Dev. Again, if you’re able to land the ball on the seam causing it to nip back viciously then it can almost look like a surprise cutter.

In the video are two clips of Donald clean bowling batsmen with fast inswinging beauties. Imran Khan bowls an Australian batsman with an inswinger – something he did quite a lot of times in his career. Ricky Ponting’s historic difficulties against Ishant Sharma are almost a part of folklores now. Incessantly using his natural length and bounce causing the batsman to come forward, and then making some of them nip-in and some of them to just hold their line – Ishant made the great batsman hop around early in his career. Here in Mohali, he sets him up with straight ones pitched up, and then bowls one that jags off the seam just back of the length to castle his man.

#3 Off or In-Cutter

The difference between the swing ball and the cutter is that the cutter is bowled when the ball is slightly older as you need to be able to roll your fingers over the rough side.

Basically, you hold the ball like a normal inswing ball with the shine away from the batsman and just roll your fingers over the rough side at the point of release.

The second way to bowl an off-cutter is to bowl split-fingered. The ball is held like a normal outswinger with the index and the middle finger being spread across the seam and the thumb opposite the middle finger. At the time of delivery the middle finger is pulled down towards the wrist in a clockwise rotation and the thumb is stiffened slightly. This kind of ball is harder to master and difficult to bowl without a prominent seam.

The difference between a regular inswinger where the ball nips back off the seam and an off-cutter is in the latter the nip back is deliberately created with a roll of the fingers. The hard thing about bowling off-cutters is mastering the accuracy. The length has to be shorter than an inswing or outswinger, because the idea is instead of asking the batsman to drive you catch him in the crease. Accurately bowled off-cutters bowled at great pace are very tough to negotiate. In the Investec Test series between England and India, we’ve seen Virat Kohli falling prey to the off-cutter twice, bowled while giving judgement outside the off-stump. The second instance – bowled off Jordan in the 4th Test – was a classic example of the split fingered off-cutter bowled with a wobbly seam.

While talking about bowlers with a great off-cutter in International cricket one can find plenty of examples in the likes of – Curtly Ambrose, Waqar Younis, Jason Gillespie, but one man could bowl it with a kind of accuracy and deadliness like no other: Glenn McGrath. Watch this great sample of off-cutters accurately directed and rammed down hard on to the deck. The exceptional thing about McGrath apart from his use of height and his accuracy, was the astute change of line. He could get right into the minds of batsmen. He would bowl a few along the corridor of uncertainty just outside off and then pitch one on inch-perfect length along the middle-stump that’d jag back and catch the batsman helpless in the crease.

Nowadays, off-cutters are mainly used on slower pitches as a variant to restrict run-flow.

#4 Leg-cutters

Leg-cutters are the cutters that go the other way, that is from the leg to the off.

Again, you hold the ball like a conventional out-swinger with the shine towards the batsman. At the point of delivery you roll your fingers over the other side which is the rough side. Again, it’s difficult to master the line and length. Ideally it should be directed around middle and off-stump enticing the drive.

Leg-cutters is one of the most antique arts of fast bowling. Bill O’Reilly, the main bowler in Bradman’s Australian team used to bowl unplayable leg-cutters or fast leg breaks that’d tie down the opposition. In the modern era, New-Zealand’s Chris Harris had an action that was tailor-made for bowling cutters and he would bowl slow leg-cutters galore in limited-overs games.

In the video, you see some classic leg-cutter wickets, but the first one bowled by Jason Gillespie is probably the most beautiful example of a leg-cutter. Pitching on off making Nasser Hussain play at it and then leaving him sharply – Jason Gillespie in my opinion had one of the most vindictive leg-cutters in the game. Once again the use of wrists for a leg-cutter is the key.

One of the fastest ever bowlers in the game Jeff Thompson, used the leg-cutter as a variation from his usual intimidating bowling. The then Australian captain Ian Chappell had this to say about it: "He had this leg cutter, and you were usually pretty happy to see it, because it meant that the ball wasn't coming at your head at 95 miles an hour."

Once again it might be the batsmen’s undoing, as they tried to go after the one away-going ball that wasn’t aimed at their body and ended up nicking!

#5 Reverse Swing

Simply put reverse swing is so called because the ball swings in a direction opposite to conventional swing. So, for instance if you hold the ball for an outswinger it will swing back into the batsman and vice-versa. Unlike the conventional swing reverse-swing won’t work unless the ball is at least 20-30 overs old.

Although there’s a lot of myth around the science of reverse-swing bowling, in reality it’s a simple principle. When the ball gets older, the movement follows the shine instead of going the opposite direction like in normal swing.

In order to get the ball to reverse, the bigger the contrast there is between the rough side and the shiny side of the ball the better it is. So the shine has to be maintained meticulously.

Hold the ball along the seam with the shiny side tilted about 30 degrees downwards.

Keep the seam positioned towards second slip if you want the ball the come back in and point it towards the leg-stump if you want it going out.

The origin of reverse-swing was mired in mystery. The first bowlers to use it were probably Pakistan’s Sarfraz Nawaz and Imran Khan. But the series in which the reverse-swing came into prominence was the 1992 one between England and Pakistan, in England. Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis fairly destroyed the English batting line-up with vicious reverse-swinging yorkers that the opposition were simply at a loss to counter.

No other bowler around international cricket could emulate this skill at that stage either and so allegations of ball-tampering arose. Since then the associations of ball-tampering have been frequently associated with reverse-swing bowling. In actuality, in order to maintain the contrast between the roughness and the shine players sometimes use external means and the line between calling it ball-tampering and ball-conditioning is rather thin.

If properly mastered the reverse swing is a fantastic weapon with the older ball. If bowled at some pace it can have as deadly an effect as this video of two of the greatest exponents of the art demonstrates!