In search of variation, bowlers take drastic action

Anyone who’s seen Lagaan – and a lot of us have – would have felt a certain sense of déjà vu as the match between Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals unfolded on Monday night. Remember the character named Bhura, who would run up to the crease, stop, but keep twirling his arm continuously before suddenly releasing it. For a while it fooled the batsmen and even got him a vital wicket. Last night, it seemed as if Shadab Jakati had turned to the movie for inspiration in his quest for variation. On the last ball of the 11th over, he walked up to bowl and half-rolled his arm over. The batsman must’ve relaxed because normally in a situation like this, the bowler will walk back to the start of his run-up. [caption id=“attachment_7195” align=“alignleft” width=“385”] Lasith Malinga, trendsetter for bowlers. Sajjad Hussain/AFP[/caption] But rather than do that, Jakati went through his bowling action once more and fired the ball in. The look of surprise on the batsman’s face had to be seen to be believed. Johan Botha, the batsman, managed to chip it to mid-on and survive but umpire Simon Taufel didn’t take very kindly to it at all. He quickly walked over to the bowler and told him not to try it again as it constituted unfair play. But a few overs later, Jakati was at it again. This time, however, he remembered Taufel’s warning and pulled out of it just in time or we would have had a much bigger controversy on our hands. However, Jakati’s attempt to try something different and surprise the batsman only points us towards the bigger picture where bowlers are trying every variation possible to unsettle the batsman. And increasingly, the direction that this seems to be taking is towards bowling actions. Jakati’s team-mate and India off-spinner R Ashwin introduces a slight pause in his action just before he bowls. Vinay Kumar has been experimenting with a copy of Malinga’s ‘sling-it-in’ action. That’s just three but it just seems like there’s plenty more on the way. This sudden trend has probably started as a result of the success that Lasith Malinga is having but one can’t help but wonder what happened to the more ‘acceptable’ forms of variation like slower balls, line, length, bouncers, using the width of the crease and perhaps, just putting it a lot more grunt. Not very long ago, bowling actions were sacrosanct. Tinkering with them was a strict no-no but now it seems like the taboo has been lifted. The onus now seems to be on shock value. Give them something that they’ve never seen before, they’ll do a double take; the bowling team may get a vital dot ball or even better a wicket. In the long run, though, attempts such as this strike one as being gimmicky. The difference between these ‘put-on’ actions and ones that the likes of Max Muthaih Muralitharan and Malinga have will eventually show. The latter group that would include the likes of Max Walker and Paul Adams amongst others were only doing what came naturally to them. As a result, they honed their skills and the actions till they were sharp enough to simply go through batting line-ups. Jakati’s attempt, though, has been nipped in the bud and now perhaps, he’ll turn to some baseball movies or even the Bodyline series for inspiration. Not sure, those will help either.

In search of variation, bowlers take drastic action

Jakati, R Ashwin, Vinay Kumar… the list of bowlers who are tweaking their bowling actions to gain an advantage over the batsmen seems to be growing.

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