Every act in cricket’s history has begun with a bowler delivering a ball to a batter 22 yards away. Delivering. Like a postman delivers a council tax bill. Like a waiter delivers a round of drinks. Of all the verbs used to describe the bowling of a ball, this one speaks to the deep-seated cultural inequity that has plagued this sport since its inception.
“If there was ever a word that proves we live in a batter’s world, this is it,” says Steve Harmison, the fearsome fast bowler turned commentator who delivered 16,313 balls for England across eight years. “But not every delivery is the same. Some come gift-wrapped like a present at Christmas. Some can jump up and smack you in the face.”
A batter can hit the ball in any direction. As we noted back in August, they can scoop over fine leg, scythe through point or bash it down the ground. But a bowler must effectively walk a tightrope. Anything sprayed too wide will be penalised. Anything floated too full or dragged down too short will be punished. Which is why bowlers aim for the nebulous realm of the corridor of uncertainty.
“That’s just an area where a batter isn’t sure if he can go forward or back, if he can leave or defend it away from his stumps,” explains Dale Steyn, the South Africa quick who claimed 439 Test wickets at 22.95. “Think of it like a blind spot in your car mirror, where you can’t see someone coming past you for a split second.”
Most balls that land in this corridor – usually on a so-called “good” length, somewhere near a fourth-stump line – are given special names. These are nuts, seeds, peaches. Harmison is fond of the jaffa. And while these arcing, hooping and ragging pills might turn a batter inside out, sometimes they are too good.
“You feel chuffed when it happens, and it’s sort of a moral victory, but they’re meaningless,” Harmison says. “Sometimes the best wicket-taking ball is actually a pile of shit. The actual jaffa looks great, and it feels great, but if it doesn’t get a wicket it can be really frustrating.”
And this is where the language of bowling begins to reveal its cruelty. The gap between the perfect ball and a meaningless one can be no more than a couple of millimetres. Harmison remembers Stuart Broad copping criticism for an expensive spell at Trent Bridge. When he reviewed the footage he found it was almost identical to his eight-wicket haul against Australia in 2015. The only change was what happened at the far end. “As a bowler, you have to accept that once you let go of the ball you have no control,” he says. “You can feel powerless. It can be isolating.”
This is why bowling attacks must work as units, with the ruthlessness of a cartel and the coordination of a pack. “There’s nothing more satisfying for me than when a batting pair looks hunted,” Steyn says. “That tells a full story about the bowlers and not just one lucky delivery.”
Steyn and Harmison did the same thing but in very different ways. Steyn would steam through his run-up, gather in his action like a panther coiling before a pounce, then send down rockets that kissed the surface. Harmison’s larger frame would lope forward, his long limbs unravelling as he hit the deck with a heavy ball. Sorry. A what?
“It’s all about the size of the bowler,” Steyn says. “A heavy-ball bowler has more weight behind him. It’s not just about pace. Guys like Jacques Kallis and Andrew Flintoff were perfect examples. I’d kiss the surface, like skimming a tennis ball off a swimming pool. Those other guys weren’t always the quickest, but they felt as fast as anyone when you faced them.”
Bowlers can easily fit into archetypes. The snarler. The golden arm. The one who bowls the hard overs up the hill and into the breeze. These are the narratives we rely on, the stories bowlers tell, and the ones they tell themselves. A thick edge flies away for four, a slog sails for six and the captain at first slip will bark: “Don’t mind that.” Steyn lifts the curtain: “To be honest, the runs always irritated me. But sometimes I genuinely don’t mind it, as long as it doesn’t happen too often.”
For all this necessary self-delusion, seamers are rarely granted a vocabulary of sorcery. Why can’t they be called wizards? Steyn gives a knowing laugh. “Only wrist spinners deserve that title,” he says, despite bowling one of cricket’s most magical balls: the late swinger at Gqeberha that uprooted Michael Vaughan’s off-stump in 2004. “Fast bowlers cast different types of spells, but we’re not as mysterious as leggies.”
In the end, the physical act of bowling, of delivering a ball, has always been simple. It’s the words we’ve wrapped around the act that complicate things. Bumpers, jaffas, heavy balls, moral victories; a vocabulary always chasing a craft that can’t be pinned down. Maybe this is why, as Steyn observes, the best have stuck to a basic aim: “Ultimately, I always tried to let the ball do the talking.”
Quote of the week
“If I was an English supporter and had paid money to come here, I’d be asking the ECB … for a refund” – Ian Botham daubs a square in this year’s Ashes Bingo after England’s sorry eight-wicket defeat in Brisbane.
Stokes in search of deputies
When talking about pace-bowling cartels and four-seam attacks that hunt in packs, both Dale Steyn and Steve Harmison wheeled out a well-worn cliche: that cricket is an individual sport played within a team. Most of the time it feels like a platitude, but Australia proved its truth in Brisbane when they compiled the seventh-highest Test score in history without a century. Mitchell Starc’s 141-ball 77 from No 9 topped the charts in a scorecard that included Jake Weatherald’s composed 72 at the top of the order and valuable contributions in the 60s from Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith and the wicketkeeper Alex Carey, who also produced one of the finest displays with the gloves seen in recent memory.
What separated Australia and England was not only the home side’s technical execution but the unmistakable sense of a side pulling in the same direction. Their lower order refused to treat batting as optional. Senior players absorbed pressure without complaint. Their bowlers dutifully stuck to disciplined areas. It was the very definition of collective purpose.
England, by contrast, look like a team frantically searching for cohesion. Bazball has long been heralded for its galvanising, liberating impact, yet under the cold exposing light of a torrid Ashes campaign it is beginning to resemble a doctrine that places expression above responsibility. Zealous sporting ideologies can be intoxicating when they work, but when the aura fades they can implode, leaving players exposed, isolated and suddenly unsure of their roles.
On their Sky Sports podcast, Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain voiced concern that Stokes seemed short of deputies beyond Joe Root. That too many were floating like shipwrecked sailors on an endless sea.
Stokes’s post-match words, intended to empower, hinted instead at a captain uncomfortably aware that he cannot carry the weight alone. Unless England rediscover their collective spirit, the very foundations of this project could start to fracture under the strain, exposing just how fragile the Bazball ideology becomes when its faith is not matched by unified resolve.
Memory lane
A match at Lord’s in July 1842 at which the new technique of overarm bowling was tested against the old underarm method. After two innings, the team that had bowled overarm had scored 194 runs against the opposing team’s 147.
Still want more?
Ali Martin fears Brendon McCullum’s comments about England ‘over-preparing’ may prove his epitaph, while Barney Ronay says that while Bazball may be unravelling, there has not been much talk about what comes next.
Shadi Khan Saif on how his admiration for Mitchell Starc now rivals his childhood worship of Imran Khan.
Alex Carey has proved himself the world’s current best wicketkeeper, reckons Brendan Foster, while Geoff Lemon praises the unsung Michael Neser’s contribution to Australia’s win at the Gabba.
“Having a Bazball at Noosa”: Australian media goes to town over England’s mid-Ashes beach break.
And in injured bowler news: Mark Wood is out for the rest of the series and so is Josh Hazlewood.
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