Ready to drive down the fast lane Holder, Shankar can surprise with swing
With arguably the best pace bowling attack in one-day cricket, Virat’s boys gear up for a happy English summer
For decades, India has dreamt of forging a world beating pace attack. There was promise, a few streaks of brilliance, and some lone rangers too over the years. But India has never before had a pace attack as unrelentingly potent, and genuinely fast, as the one that’s headed to England.
In Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, India may have finally found a band of fast men who can change the annals of a bowling history steeped in spin. Success had started to trickle in the form of a Test series win in Australia, but a World Cup victory can open the floodgates.
Kumar and Shami are not new to the demands of a World Cup; Bumrah maybe the youngest of the three, but he is justifiably talked up as a game-changer. Picked from the obscurity of domestic age-group cricket by John Wright, who was then scouting for Mumbai Indians, Bumrah’s career graph has been remarkable. At 19, Bumrah made his debut at the 2013 IPL with a bang, picking three wickets in his first match.
Bumrah didn’t take any wicket in the only other IPL match he played that edition, but he got his first-class call-up for Gujarat the same year, where he finished as the team’s highest wicket-taker. Three years later, he was making his debut for the India ODI and T20 sides.
By the time Bumrah made his Test debut in the New Year’s Test in Cape Town last year, he was a much improved bowler. He ended the three-match series with 14 wickets, one short of Mohammed Shami’s record tally of 15.
Since then, Bumrah has gone from strength to strength, perfecting the yorker and building a rhythm that allowed him to bowl longer, meaner spells, all the while sending in balls at speeds of up to 150kph.
Tennis-ball cricket was a reason for getting the yorkers right, since there is no place for length balls which do not swing. During schooldays in Ahmedabad—his mother recently retired as principal—it was the fear of making noise at home that made Bumrah aim for the bottom of the floor skirtings. By the time his mother had agreed to proper coaching (after he had completed school), Bumrah had developed an action as awkward as it gets, but one so effective that it didn’t need any correction, not even at the NCA or the MRF Pace Foundation. All they focused on was building his strength. He now uses that to get generous carry on the most placid of pitches. Add to that the ability to move the ball away from batsmen and more control— thanks to the hours spent with Lasith Malinga at the Mumbai Indians nets—and you have someone who can be pressed into service at any juncture.
MEERUT’S MASTER OF SWING
If picked, there is no one better than Kumar for opening the bowling and making the most of the moisture laden conditions expected during English summers. Kumar harnessed swing bowling by accident. Raised in the sports goods manufacturers’ hub of Meerut, Kumar almost always used to be around when a new entrepreneurship was on the lookout for local bowlers who could try out their product.
So unlike many who got a feel of the new lacquer maybe once or twice in their lifetime, Kumar was lucky. And while it is said that no bowler has total control over swing, Kumar’s fascinating first-ball wicket ODI debut against Pakistan’s Mohammed Hafeez— aka The Professor—on December 30, 2012, gave hope at a time Zaheer Khan was being phased out.
FROM UP TO INDIA VIA BENGAL
Enter Mohammed Shami a week later. From the dusty fields of Sahaspur in Uttar Pradesh—where he learnt the basics of fast bowling from his father and brothers —to the maidans of Kolkata and finally breaking into the Bengal squad, riding on his sustained success in the extremely competitive division league cricket of Kolkata. He joined Dalhousie Club in 2007 but only after moving to Town Club did Shami start making a name for himself, especially for not cutting down on pace even while bowling against the wind. Back then, Shami was barely making ends meet; a club official gave him a room in his house to stay, and dinner was often the parcel of biryani players get after a good day’s play. But there was barely a day when club scoresheets—submitted at the Calcutta Sports Journalists’ Club in the evening—didn’t highlight his name. Considering the lopsided league matches played on beaten down pitches in grounds with small boundaries, Shami’s consistency was awe-inspiring. Breaking into the Bengal squad—which he did in 2010— was a matter of time. But only after a stint with bowling mentor, Wasim Akram, at the nets of KKR did Shami master the nuances of seam bowling.
By the end of his debut year in 2013, he had nine wickets in his first Test, in which India routed the West Indies by an innings and 51 runs within three days at Eden Gardens.
Shami’s career, though, has been marred by injuries. After the 2015 World Cup, in which he played through pain, there was a genuine scare that he may not recover from a left knee injury, followed by a Grade 2 hamstring tear that ruled him out of cricket for more than a year. He returned, though, in time for the 2016 World Twenty20. More trouble followed two Marches later: he flunked the match fitness test for India players, was accused of domestic violence and subsequently taken off the list of BCCI’S centrally contracted cricketers. Only through sheer performance did Shami bounce back, leaner by 10-12 kgs and determined more than ever to let only his cricket do the talking.
Kumar has had a stop-start career too. On each comeback, his resolve was put on the line. Each time, the slightly built pacer proved he is made of sterner stuff.
Like in Gros Islet, St Lucia, in 2016 where Kumar, after an 18-month hiatus, got 5/33 in the first innings to help India go 2-0 up. Or when he was picked for the 2017 Champions Trophy, after having played just four ODIS in the 19 months preceding it, and finished as India’s highest wicket-taker. There is always this murmur that Kumar isn’t fast enough, but the middling 130s might be just what India need to complement Bumrah and Shami. Together, Bumrah, Shami and Kumar have exactly what it takes to boss one-day cricket. They are all good with the new ball, and they have variations to offer from their collective arsenal.
Shami is skiddy and likes to pitch it up, mixing things up with a disguised bouncer. Kumar goes full, using swing, while Bumrah is all about hitting that back of the length spot. Kumar and Bumrah have also mastered well-disguised slower deliveries and swinging yorkers, making them perfect death-over operators. All three can choke the runs—their overall economy rate hovers around the 5-run mark, not a mean feat in the modern game. In other words, this is, on paper, not just the best pace attack India has ever had, but also the very best in ODI cricket right now. A lot has been said about “English conditions” in the build up to this World Cup with the image it conjures—grey skies, green pitches, the ball swinging and seaming with batsmen needing to dig in and fight. However, that has not been the case. Since the change in regulations before the 2015 World Cup, England has been the fastest scoring host country— the pitches there are the flattest.
That’s partly driven by England’s excellent batting record, but also because the pitches have offered bowlers significantly less than they used to. Over the past four years, there has been less seam movement. New ball swing in England is a myth in modern cricket. Since the 2015 World Cup, England has seen around 0.71° of movement in the first 10 overs of an ODI. It’s enough to trouble batsmen, but it’s no more than in majority of other countries; in fact, it’s less than the global average of 0.74° in those first 10 overs.
The bowlers who have swung the new ball substantially in England have been the absolute best. Tim Southee and Trent Boult found prodigious swing in the 2015 series that immediately followed the World Cup. Mitchell Starc that summer found considerable sideways movement. The only England bowler to consistently move the new ball in England is David Willey, who bowls at such a pace that he needs to move the ball to be a threat. Essentially, the idea that you can rock up in England with a classic swing bowler and just hoop it around corners with the white ball does not hold true.
DROP IN NEW BALL MOVEMENT
The old ball doesn’t tend to swing either. In overs 11-40, ODIS in England have seen an average of around 0.6° swing every year since the last World Cup, consistently seeing a slight drop from the new ball movement.
An average of 0.66° swing in the second powerplay is higher than the global average of 0.64°, albeit only marginally. However, it does show that old ball swing is still a weapon in England, as much if not more than it is in countries one associates more with reverse swing.
Among the big contenders coming to England, a few stand out as potential swingers. Sri Lanka’s Suranga Lakmal is one of the elite swing bowlers, while Nathan Coulter-nile is evidence that Australia’s best hope of success is their excellent attack.
Perhaps the surprise package could be West Indies all-rounder Jason Holder. The Windies skipper has seemingly added swing to his armoury. The degree of swing he’s found with the new ball— from a reasonable sample size of 11 innings—is by far the best. His team does hold particularly high hopes of reaching the semi-finals, but if he can deliver, Holder could give his batting line-up a chance of delivering a few shocks.
For India, the biggest swinger of the new ball in the last 18 months has been Vijay Shankar. His average swing is 0.8° in overs 1-10, and whilst he has had the benefit of bowling in New Zealand, he’s also had to bowl in Australia. Many have mocked chief selector MSK Prasad’s use of the phrase “three-dimensional” while explaining Shankar’s selection over Ambati Rayudu, but this could be exactly what he was talking about. Shankar may not be the best bowler across all conditions, but is as capable of finding movement as Bhuvneshwar Kumar.