Colorblind Genius
First Class Captain
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2019
- Runs
- 4,208
- Post of the Week
- 3
*Disclaimer*: This discussion is not pertinent to T20.
So lets get straight to the point.
If I pick top 100 talented right arm fast bowling youngsters from Pakistan, and give them to our national bowling coach Mr. Waqar Yonus - increase his salary to $1 million a month - and then ask him to teach 10 off of these 100 talented young bowlers, that trademark of your inswining yorker, Waqar will most likely fail to do so, even if we give him 10 years worth of time.
Same goes with Wasim. He can't produce another Wasim no matter how hard he coaches ANYONE.
Why stop here? Same goes with Sachin and Viv Richards. They can't produce another Sachin or another Viv even if they work together.
So now that we kinda got the idea that all time great legends are not only hard-workers but they also have a supreme God gifted talent to begin with.
And this God gifted talent is NOT something that they can transfer or teach to others.
Keeping this in mind, our epitome of pace bowling was when the two W's were at peak.
And now that we know that we CANNOT "plan" to produce those two W's by "hard work" or by improving our domestic cricket on the grass root level (which we must do nonetheless), the question is, what realistic standard of pace bowling should we idolize, and then make it our goal and work towards it in an effort to compete against good TEST teams?
And this is where my post kicks in.
I started thinking about this post after our recent Test defeats in Australia.
In the great charms of pace bowling, we know that "The Outswinger" is not only one of the most beautiful deliveries, but also one of the most lethal weapons in the armory a pace bowler.
With the correct line and length of an outswinger, you immediately start asking questions. No matter who he is, you force the batsman to start taking risks.
Keeping this in mind, we now look at the ability of our pace bowlers to deliver the outswingers. And we see that there is hardly any consistency.
The question is, how to outswing the ball? And why do our national team level pace bowlers are not well versed with it but more importantly our coaches, especially our national bowling coach is totally lost about it?
From the little experience of my cricket playing days, and watching a number of videos, I noticed that pace bowlers who can bowl the outswinger have one quality/skill in common.
"They manage to keep the seam POSITION and seam DIRECTION in a certain shape.
(Again, we are not talking about Wasim Akram and Waqar Younus who where God gifted. We are talking about pace bowlers who have actually LEARNED how to swing the ball after years n years of practice).
So here it goes.
a - Notice the seam position. It's upright.
b - Notice the seam direction. It's slightly tilted towards the slips.
We have Jimmy Anderson and Tim Southe here in the examples. Both are doing what's noted in 'a' and 'b' above.
1 - Jimmy Anderson.
Captured the screen shot at 11:10
This is the wicket of Pretorius on second day of the second Test between Eng and SA in 2020.
3 - Tim Southee.
Screen shot at 0:25 and also at 1:48
Rewind a little and watch the replays in slow motion at around 0:25 and 1:48, to see how he moves the ball to a right hander for an outswinger, and to a left hander for whom it becomes an inswinger. Seam shape does not wobble in either case.
[utube]xJW0OgK7obQ&t=108s[/utube]
Additionally, if you look at the left handed pacers, they seem to be doing the same.
Tilt the seam position slightly towards the slips, don't let it wobble, and make the ball talk.
Here is Boult at 0:29.
A mind boggling outswinger to a left hander. Rewind and watch the replay in slowmo at around 0:29 timestamp.
Starc does it all the time. Just watch his seam shape in slow motion replays.
There are many other pace bowlers who do the same.
-----------------------------------------------
Now, in comparison, watch the slow motion replays of existing Pakistani fast bowlers (both left arm and right armers) during our Australia tour..
And you will notice that none of 'em is able to create the seam position in this shape. (Do they even know about it?). What we mostly saw instead, was a horrendous wobbling of the seam on a wrong line and length through out the test series. You can watch the hightlights of the entire series on YT.
There may be some one off incidents of our current bowlers doing it but from what I remember, Shaoib Akhtar used to do this.
Here is he at 2:29.
Rewind and watch the replay in slow motion and look at the seam position at around 2:29 timestamp.
So I get back to my question.
Instead of living in the glories of the past and subtly yearning to have another Wasim or Waqar, why don't we start looking forward?
Pace bowling was our bread and butter.
If indeed its genuinely hard to produce another pair of the two W's, why can't our existing pace bowlers learn this basic technique of outswing?
This does not seem to require a whole lot of "naturally God gifted talent".
It's a technique and it's an art, that many can learn with proper coaching and extensive practice.
If I look back, Amir and Junaid both lost their ability to swing, and no one in our setup was able to help them revive it.
We now have Shinwari, Naseem, and even Abbas and whatnot. They just don't seem to be able to effectively create this seam shape. They simply can't swing it in this fashion.
Yes, the pitch and weather conditions are also a factor to swing the ball. Yes, there are a couple of other ways to swing the ball and YES, you will not always get a wicket if you outswing the ball. But for goodness sake, how hard is to realize that learning this technique could be an absolute lethal weapon in your armory?
So where do we go from here?
Many of you may not agree but I think it's our bowling coach.
I doubt that Waqar is able to teach this technique to our existing pacers. And I doubt that our domestic level pace bowling coaches even have the foggiest of ideas about it.
The world has moved on but we are still stuck in the golden memories of Wasim and Waqar. IMO, it's time to change the reverse gear, and march forward to catch up with the rest.
IMO, if we TRULY want improve our pace bowling by injecting this lethal skill of outswing, we need a coach like Cricket Victoria's Tim McCaskill.
Watch how he gives the basic tips, not only on how to effectively deliver an outswinger but also, on the opposite seam shape for the inswingers.
[utube]cu4uKWWTMUo[/utube]
IMO, we truly don't need Waqar. Not even one bit.
Lots and lots of money is being wasted here. And we already know that he cannot teach that trademark of his own, "toe crushing inswinging yorker" to anyone. No matter how much money you offer him, and no matter how high of a position in PCB you give him, he can't teach that trademark Yorker to anyone.
I firmly believe that we actually need a bowling coach like Tim to extensively work with our pace bowlers who clock above 130 kph. Teach them this technique and then supervise the extensive practice sessions till we truly learn this art.
In my opinion, if this happens, we will significantly improve our pace bowling potency.
And next when we visit Australia, NZ, England and South Africa where conditions may support swing, chances are, our pace bowlers could uplift the game, instead of how poorly we bowled in the last test series during the Australian tour.
So lets get straight to the point.
If I pick top 100 talented right arm fast bowling youngsters from Pakistan, and give them to our national bowling coach Mr. Waqar Yonus - increase his salary to $1 million a month - and then ask him to teach 10 off of these 100 talented young bowlers, that trademark of your inswining yorker, Waqar will most likely fail to do so, even if we give him 10 years worth of time.
Same goes with Wasim. He can't produce another Wasim no matter how hard he coaches ANYONE.
Why stop here? Same goes with Sachin and Viv Richards. They can't produce another Sachin or another Viv even if they work together.
So now that we kinda got the idea that all time great legends are not only hard-workers but they also have a supreme God gifted talent to begin with.
And this God gifted talent is NOT something that they can transfer or teach to others.
Keeping this in mind, our epitome of pace bowling was when the two W's were at peak.
And now that we know that we CANNOT "plan" to produce those two W's by "hard work" or by improving our domestic cricket on the grass root level (which we must do nonetheless), the question is, what realistic standard of pace bowling should we idolize, and then make it our goal and work towards it in an effort to compete against good TEST teams?
And this is where my post kicks in.
I started thinking about this post after our recent Test defeats in Australia.
In the great charms of pace bowling, we know that "The Outswinger" is not only one of the most beautiful deliveries, but also one of the most lethal weapons in the armory a pace bowler.
With the correct line and length of an outswinger, you immediately start asking questions. No matter who he is, you force the batsman to start taking risks.
Keeping this in mind, we now look at the ability of our pace bowlers to deliver the outswingers. And we see that there is hardly any consistency.
The question is, how to outswing the ball? And why do our national team level pace bowlers are not well versed with it but more importantly our coaches, especially our national bowling coach is totally lost about it?
From the little experience of my cricket playing days, and watching a number of videos, I noticed that pace bowlers who can bowl the outswinger have one quality/skill in common.
"They manage to keep the seam POSITION and seam DIRECTION in a certain shape.
(Again, we are not talking about Wasim Akram and Waqar Younus who where God gifted. We are talking about pace bowlers who have actually LEARNED how to swing the ball after years n years of practice).
So here it goes.
a - Notice the seam position. It's upright.
b - Notice the seam direction. It's slightly tilted towards the slips.
We have Jimmy Anderson and Tim Southe here in the examples. Both are doing what's noted in 'a' and 'b' above.
1 - Jimmy Anderson.
Captured the screen shot at 11:10
This is the wicket of Pretorius on second day of the second Test between Eng and SA in 2020.
3 - Tim Southee.
Screen shot at 0:25 and also at 1:48
Rewind a little and watch the replays in slow motion at around 0:25 and 1:48, to see how he moves the ball to a right hander for an outswinger, and to a left hander for whom it becomes an inswinger. Seam shape does not wobble in either case.
[utube]xJW0OgK7obQ&t=108s[/utube]
Additionally, if you look at the left handed pacers, they seem to be doing the same.
Tilt the seam position slightly towards the slips, don't let it wobble, and make the ball talk.
Here is Boult at 0:29.
A mind boggling outswinger to a left hander. Rewind and watch the replay in slowmo at around 0:29 timestamp.
Starc does it all the time. Just watch his seam shape in slow motion replays.
There are many other pace bowlers who do the same.
-----------------------------------------------
Now, in comparison, watch the slow motion replays of existing Pakistani fast bowlers (both left arm and right armers) during our Australia tour..
And you will notice that none of 'em is able to create the seam position in this shape. (Do they even know about it?). What we mostly saw instead, was a horrendous wobbling of the seam on a wrong line and length through out the test series. You can watch the hightlights of the entire series on YT.
There may be some one off incidents of our current bowlers doing it but from what I remember, Shaoib Akhtar used to do this.
Here is he at 2:29.
Rewind and watch the replay in slow motion and look at the seam position at around 2:29 timestamp.
So I get back to my question.
Instead of living in the glories of the past and subtly yearning to have another Wasim or Waqar, why don't we start looking forward?
Pace bowling was our bread and butter.
If indeed its genuinely hard to produce another pair of the two W's, why can't our existing pace bowlers learn this basic technique of outswing?
This does not seem to require a whole lot of "naturally God gifted talent".
It's a technique and it's an art, that many can learn with proper coaching and extensive practice.
If I look back, Amir and Junaid both lost their ability to swing, and no one in our setup was able to help them revive it.
We now have Shinwari, Naseem, and even Abbas and whatnot. They just don't seem to be able to effectively create this seam shape. They simply can't swing it in this fashion.
Yes, the pitch and weather conditions are also a factor to swing the ball. Yes, there are a couple of other ways to swing the ball and YES, you will not always get a wicket if you outswing the ball. But for goodness sake, how hard is to realize that learning this technique could be an absolute lethal weapon in your armory?
So where do we go from here?
Many of you may not agree but I think it's our bowling coach.
I doubt that Waqar is able to teach this technique to our existing pacers. And I doubt that our domestic level pace bowling coaches even have the foggiest of ideas about it.
The world has moved on but we are still stuck in the golden memories of Wasim and Waqar. IMO, it's time to change the reverse gear, and march forward to catch up with the rest.
IMO, if we TRULY want improve our pace bowling by injecting this lethal skill of outswing, we need a coach like Cricket Victoria's Tim McCaskill.
Watch how he gives the basic tips, not only on how to effectively deliver an outswinger but also, on the opposite seam shape for the inswingers.
[utube]cu4uKWWTMUo[/utube]
IMO, we truly don't need Waqar. Not even one bit.
Lots and lots of money is being wasted here. And we already know that he cannot teach that trademark of his own, "toe crushing inswinging yorker" to anyone. No matter how much money you offer him, and no matter how high of a position in PCB you give him, he can't teach that trademark Yorker to anyone.
I firmly believe that we actually need a bowling coach like Tim to extensively work with our pace bowlers who clock above 130 kph. Teach them this technique and then supervise the extensive practice sessions till we truly learn this art.
In my opinion, if this happens, we will significantly improve our pace bowling potency.
And next when we visit Australia, NZ, England and South Africa where conditions may support swing, chances are, our pace bowlers could uplift the game, instead of how poorly we bowled in the last test series during the Australian tour.
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