The Future for Fast Bowlers in Twenty20 Cricket
World Cup Shows No Appeal for Quick Bowling in the Modern Game
Jul 7, 2009
If anything can be learnt from the recent Twenty20 Cricket World Cup - the ultra abbreviated form of the game - it is surely that outright fast bowling, the way it once was, will struggle to survive in the future. It may not necessarily die altogether, but its importance could wane severely.
Variety More Important Than Speed
For decades these fiery leather-slingers would go about their business with one thing in mind: bowling fast. Extremely fast. Fast enough to cause damage not only on the scoreboard but to the bones and nerves of their willow-yielding opponents as well. This is not to suggest that the captain’s words – “line and length son, line and length” – would not be taken on board. Certainly the pumped up quick would endeavor to do just that, so long as he could achieve it whilst bowling extremely fast.
Yorkers used to be for variety - an attempt at catching the batsman off-guard and uprooting his middle stump. Slower balls did not exist unless delivered by a fast man carrying an injury. Both became more prominent with the introduction of one-day cricket. If you can’t get him out, don’t let him score a boundary. This is the key even more so in T20. Line and length can go for six. A perfect outswinger that finds the edge is a guaranteed four runs through the empty slips cordon. How can the umpire judge an LBW appeal with the batsman fidgeting around his crease like an impatient toddler?
Runs Priority Over Wickets
Fast bowlers aren’t searching for wickets. They’re searching for a place to hide. They’re praying for six singles off the over and nothing more. Where’s the glory in that? Wickets are merely an afterthought. Restricting the other side to 120 without loss is more pleasing than 121 with nine men back in the pavilion. And who could blame a captain for feeling this way? As always in sport, results are everything. Doubtless there are many supporters who care only for victory, but equally there are those who relish the nature of the contest.
According to statistics from Cricket Info there were fifty-four team innings in the T20 World Cup and in all but seven of them the batting side was not dismissed. Restricted to one or two over spells a bowler would struggle to examine the weaknesses in a cardboard cutout batsman let alone a living, breathing, reacting one.
These days it’s not about being fast; it’s about being frugal. One of the best “fast” bowlers in the limited forms of the game – Australia’s Nathan Bracken – runs off almost fewer paces then the spinner Nathan Hauritz and extracts more turn. He must be suffering from an identity crisis and he’s not the only one. West Indies captain Chris Gayle has almost forgotten what Test Cricket is, telling Anna Kessel (The Guardian, 14/05/09), 'I wouldn't be so sad if test cricket died out'. If he had to bat for more than twenty overs he’d probably start cramping.
What Does the Future Hold?
This all begs the question of how young up-and-coming fast bowlers are supposed to practice. The same leg-cutter just outside off stump might get him a wicket in a Test Match but be slapped to mid-wicket in T20. Are there kids all over the world right now charging into bowl four consecutive slower deliveries with the brand new shiny ball then slipping in the “fast one” as a change-up? Indeed if rules are not changed and attitudes adapted, fast bowlers might fast become a dying breed.
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