Swing to win, India

[express bowling]

Er I am not saying its about manjrekar. More manjrekar what he said symbolisies the cricket culture in india among coaches, players and fans ie dont worry about pace as we cant do this cos indian and anyway better to focus on line and lenghth with movement. While other countries say bowl fast and also have line and length with movement

Many good points. It is not as if other countries have just pace. The skills of their quicks are far better too.

[express bowling]

A few points about Manju's article 1) The bowlers that he has listed, what is their test average ? The best is I think 29 and mostly between 32 to 38. Top strike bowlers have test averages between 20 to 26. Yet, he wants to emulate that model. 2) Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowls 127 to 137, average 131/132 k. He is not a 135 k av. bowler. 3) If a medium paced bowler takes wickets, he should be encouraged. As long as he is taking wickets, nothing should be changed with his pace etc. But making him a rolemodel and going back to medium paced swing bowlers, a model which had never given us a true strike bowler among pacers, is sad. 4) Most Good strike bowlers have everything ; pace, bounce, swing, seam movement, line, length. It is really not a -- either pace or swing argument. If you you lack something you have a disadvantage. 5) In a country where people have traditionally thought that pace is not that important, an attitude that let us find medium pace swing bowlers, if a quick comes along it is ok, won't give us fast bowlers. A lot of extra effort is needed. 6) The attitude should be, we will try to find wicket taking and skilled fast bowlers. If, we get a good skilled medium pacer taking wickets we will use him too. If we aim for mediocracy we will get mediocracy.

[express bowling]

7) Creating a medium paced swing bowler prototype is like creating a wayward fast bowler prototype or a non-swinging fast bowler prototype. The objective should be to create a fast, wicket taking and skilled fast bowler as the target and go as close as possible to that.

[Sooda]

If we aim for mediocracy we will get mediocracy.

Team India is a mediocracy.

[vvvslaxman]

old interview of Waqar http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/586683.html ................... Do you lose control of swing if you are trying for pace? I do not agree at all. That is a wrong idea completely. Look at Dale Steyn. He bowls at 150kph-plus and he swings it big. Big bananas come out of his hand. :hysterical: His wrist is in such a beautiful position when the ball comes out, and all his energy is going through the crease nicely. That last part is due to his fitness. Fast bowling is not an easy art. You need to have a brain, you need to be smart to understand what bowling is all about. I can give you my own example when I first started playing for Pakistan. I was lucky that I had other senior fast bowlers who were really doing well, and I had a bit of competition with them. I also had Imran Khan use me nicely. He understood me better than myself. I did not have any idea what fast bowling was. All I knew was to bowl fast. It is important to have someone who can guide the youngster and tell him it will come. But it takes a lot of time to master the art. ...........................

[G_B_]

What every bowling attack needs is variety. I think a combo of Umesh-Kumar-Ahmed will be a balanced one. I think Sanjay is wrong to say India need only swing bowlers. Philander works cause he has a different bowler at the other end. In the limited overs matches v England and Pak the pacers have done well.

[Crookbond]

old interview of Waqar http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/586683.html ................... Do you lose control of swing if you are trying for pace? I do not agree at all. That is a wrong idea completely. Look at Dale Steyn. He bowls at 150kph-plus and he swings it big. Big bananas come out of his hand. :hysterical: His wrist is in such a beautiful position when the ball comes out, and all his energy is going through the crease nicely. That last part is due to his fitness. Fast bowling is not an easy art. You need to have a brain, you need to be smart to understand what bowling is all about. I can give you my own example when I first started playing for Pakistan. I was lucky that I had other senior fast bowlers who were really doing well, and I had a bit of competition with them. I also had Imran Khan use me nicely. He understood me better than myself. I did not have any idea what fast bowling was. All I knew was to bowl fast. It is important to have someone who can guide the youngster and tell him it will come. But it takes a lot of time to master the art. ...........................

:hysterical:

[panther]

What a Pic, amazing follow through.

[Crookbond]

I agree the non-striker has an amazing follow through in the crease. :hatsoff:

[SLICKR392]

old interview of Waqar http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/586683.html ................... Do you lose control of swing if you are trying for pace? I do not agree at all. That is a wrong idea completely. Look at Dale Steyn. He bowls at 150kph-plus and he swings it big. Big bananas come out of his hand. :hysterical: His wrist is in such a beautiful position when the ball comes out, and all his energy is going through the crease nicely. That last part is due to his fitness. Fast bowling is not an easy art. You need to have a brain, you need to be smart to understand what bowling is all about. I can give you my own example when I first started playing for Pakistan. I was lucky that I had other senior fast bowlers who were really doing well, and I had a bit of competition with them. I also had Imran Khan use me nicely. He understood me better than myself. I did not have any idea what fast bowling was. All I knew was to bowl fast. It is important to have someone who can guide the youngster and tell him it will come. But it takes a lot of time to master the art. ...........................

:lois:

[Muloghonto]

With all this talk about medium pacers being no good, does anyone of you actually know what Akram, Ambrose, McGrath, Walsh, Pollock,Fanie deVilliers, etc. bowled at ? All of them were capable of bowling in the 140-145 zone. All of them mostly bowled in the 130-135kph zone. So that tells you that Manju is correct- we must use medium pacers with good movement off the seam and consistency as the 'benchmark' to deal with, if we so happen to have 140kph bowler with the above attributes, it is a bonus. India's problem in the past is not that their pacers were short on pace, its been movement. It tells you something, when your top pacer in the 90s and 3rd most accomplished pacer did not even have an outswinger by the time he'd played 40 test matches. Its telling that Zaheer did not even have the basic leftarmer's skill of bringing the ball back into the rightie till he'd played for about 4 years or so. Our pacers sucked not because they didn't have pace, but because they had extremely limited skillsets. Our pacers like Praveen, Bhuvi, etc. can be successful despite limited pace, because they can move the ball both ways, though with Bhuvi, he has a killer inswinger but an outswinger that barely moves out.

[Muloghonto]

A few points about Manju's article 1) The bowlers that he has listed, what is their test average ? The best is I think 29 and mostly between 32 to 38. Top strike bowlers have test averages between 20 to 26. Yet, he wants to emulate that model. 2) Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowls 127 to 137, average 131/132 k. He is not a 135 k av. bowler. 3) If a medium paced bowler takes wickets, he should be encouraged. As long as he is taking wickets, nothing should be changed with his pace etc. But making him a rolemodel and going back to medium paced swing bowlers, a model which had never given us a true strike bowler among pacers, is sad. 4) Most Good strike bowlers have everything ; pace, bounce, swing, seam movement, line, length. It is really not a -- either pace or swing argument. If you you lack something you have a disadvantage. 5) In a country where people have traditionally thought that pace is not that important, an attitude that let us find medium pace swing bowlers, if a quick comes along it is ok, won't give us fast bowlers. A lot of extra effort is needed. 6) The attitude should be, we will try to find wicket taking and skilled fast bowlers. If, we get a good skilled medium pacer taking wickets we will use him too. If we aim for mediocracy we will get mediocracy.

This is an over-exaggeration. Most great bowlers, let alone good ones, do not have every trick in the book, unless your name is Wasim Akram. Malcolm Marshall did not have a slower ball, Ambrose did not have extreme pace for most of his career or a slower ball, McGrath barely moved the ball off the seam in either direction. Waqar did not have the consistency of a great bowler ( he was all-out attack, all the time. Sometimes it lead to 6-40, sometimes it lead to 0-90), neither could he generate good bounce off of good length(slingshot action and all that).Hadlee lacked extreme pace, Donald did not believe in cutters (leg or off). What you need to succeed, unless you got a clear 'gimmick' (eg: Waqar's brutally dipping inswinging yorker), you *must* have consistency to put the ball on the same spot 99 out of 100 times. Pollock, McGrath,Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh,Akram, McGrath all did. If you lack extreme pace, you *must* be able to get seam movement BOTH WAYS. This is where the Indian pacers of the past were ordinary. Kapil after his knee problems started bowling even more side on and lost the inswinger (which was never his forte in the first place). Srinath had no outswinger to speak of until the late 90s, Zaheer couldn't move the ball in to righties till 2005 or so. The reason why Praveen Kumar was successful in England, despite being a 125-130kph bowler, is because he could move the ball both ways. The same reason why Srinath was not successful there. You should see how brutally effective Ambrose was in the late 90s/early 2000s when he was 37-38 years old and bowled at 125-130kph, but still got figures like 25-10-45-4 or 18-3-42-4, because he had the accuracy of an alltime great spin bowler, could still cut the ball both ways and got good bounce, even at 80mph. Far more important than pace, is the movement, consistency and bounce factor. Not to mention, brains.

[King Tendulkar]

With all this talk about medium pacers being no good' date=' does anyone of you actually know what Akram, [b']Ambrose, McGrath, Walsh, Pollock,Fanie deVilliers, etc. bowled at ? All of them were capable of bowling in the 140-145 zone. All of them mostly bowled in the 130-135kph zone. So that tells you that Manju is correct- we must use medium pacers with good movement off the seam and consistency as the 'benchmark' to deal with, if we so happen to have 140kph bowler with the above attributes, it is a bonus. India's problem in the past is not that their pacers were short on pace, its been movement. It tells you something, when your top pacer in the 90s and 3rd most accomplished pacer did not even have an outswinger by the time he'd played 40 test matches. Its telling that Zaheer did not even have the basic leftarmer's skill of bringing the ball back into the rightie till he'd played for about 4 years or so. Our pacers sucked not because they didn't have pace, but because they had extremely limited skillsets. Our pacers like Praveen, Bhuvi, etc. can be successful despite limited pace, because they can move the ball both ways, though with Bhuvi, he has a killer inswinger but an outswinger that barely moves out.

Ambrose was proper fast, stop this nonsense. Yes in later part of carrer slowed down. But dont lable a great fast bowler meduim pcae for fecks sake

[diga]

All of them were capable of bowling in the 140-145 zone. All of them mostly bowled in the 130-135kph zone.

The key thing is they were all capable of bowling 140+ and had good height compared to B.Kumar or P.Kumar or V.Kumar...On a flat patta, its more often the kumar's who get hammered.

[Muloghonto]

Ambrose was proper fast' date=' stop this nonsense. Yes in later part of carrer slowed down. But dont lable a great fast bowler meduim pcae for fecks sake[/quote'] Ambrose barely broke the 90mph barrier and even when he destroyed England in Port of Spain (where he scuttled the English for less than 50 in the 2nd innings), he barely broke 140kph. Ambrose for most of his career was 135-140 kph and by the time India visited the carribean in 1997, Ambrose was barely crossing 130kph at most. Ambrose never was blindingly fast, what he had, was execptionally good control and exceptionally good bounce from good length. When good length deliveries come to your average 5'7 batsman's chest high, its practically unplayable. As i said, none of the bowlers i named ( Ambrose, Walsh, Pollock, Akram, McGrath, Fanie deVilliers,etc) were faster than the likes of Ishant/Junaid Khan/Yadav and in most cases, were a shade slower. They all however, were much much more skilled than any Indian pacer thats ever existed. None of them were the complete package either, except for Akram, who could do anything a fast bowler could concievably do.

[Muloghonto]

The key thing is they were all capable of bowling 140+ and had good height compared to B.Kumar or P.Kumar or V.Kumar...On a flat patta' date=' its more often the kumar's who get hammered.[/quote'] By capable, i mean their effort ball. In the epic 1999 West Indies vs Australia series where lara single-handedly won the series against McGrath,Warne, Gillespie and co., McGrath's effort ball barely crossed 140 kph. Ambrose, for the last 50 matches of his career, got 186 wicket @ 20.88, yet his effort ball barely hit 140kph through this period.

[King Tendulkar]

By capable, i mean their effort ball. In the epic 1999 West Indies vs Australia series where lara single-handedly won the series against McGrath,Warne, Gillespie and co., McGrath's effort ball barely crossed 140 kph. Ambrose, for the last 50 matches of his career, got 186 wicket @ 20.88, yet his effort ball barely hit 140kph through this period.

Nonsense. Ambrose low 80mph bowler, what you smoking

[King Tendulkar]

Apparently ambrose and vinnay kumar bowl same speeds:hysterical:

[Sooda]

Akram and Walsh were slower than Ishant?! Not until they were in their early 30's or so! youre right they were far more skilled- at a faster pace. They were not express their peaks but were fast, not fast medium by any means McGrath might have been about the same pace or slower but with his consistency and accuracy he was a demon.

[Marut]

We want bowlers like Imran, Waqar Younis, Marshall, Akhtar, Lillee etc who can run down sides with sheer pace. Even very good batsmen genuinely fear express pace. Swing bowlers can be effective, but I don't see any of our bowlers (except an improved version of Yadav) who can intimidate the opposition into submission. These 130-135K bowlers need helpful conditions to be successful. They would rarely run through sides. We need accurate and skilled bowlers who consistantly bowl 140+ and frequently bowl 145+ and occasionally reach 150-160. Manjrekar's idea may work for a short while. After a while, we would see our bowlers loose 5-10 kph speed and they pose no threat to international quality batsman, swing or no swing. Some bowlers like McGrath were not lightning fast, but were highly disciplined and accurate and gave nothing away. Such bowlers are not common. Young pacers must focus on speed and then on accuracy. If you are not a fast bowler to begin with, you will never remain a threatening bowler all your life and at some point you will loose some control and accuracy and with no speed for backup, your career would be finished. This is what that routinely happens to Indian bowlers who swing a lot but are not very pacy. Pacy bowlers get enough time to recover their accuracy if they loose it.