The science of taming cricket’s thunderbolts
Many of the great batsmen relish it. Or say they do. On fast bowling, Justin Langer, Perth-born, slips into poetry: ‘‘You stand here, sea breeze, and fast bowlers are coming at you. It’s quite a scary proposition. They’re letting go of these thunderbolts. When you’re at the Waca, and you’ve got Mitchell Johnson, Shoaib Akhtar or Curtly Ambrose running down the breeze, you know you’re alive.’’
‘‘You know you’re alive’’ - but your innings can be dead, quickly, if facing deliveries too quick for the brain to compute renders you meat for the kind of bowlers England will face in Perth from today.
To say England succumbed to raw pace in Brisbane and Adelaide would be too simplistic, though speed and bounce Third Ashes test, England v Australia WACA ground, Perth; today to Monday from 3.30pm caught many out. Yet they will certainly face that trial by fire in Perth, which venerates memories of Dennis Lillee and Mitchell Johnson blowing teams away.
The science around truly fast bowling is still forming, but the ECB are keen students of the data. Raph Brandon, their head of research, says: ‘‘Batting definitely requires anticipation and prediction on the part of the batter.
‘‘Basically, to guess the line and length of the ball from limited information, probably mostly before the ball leaves the bowler’s hand, then simultaneously choose a shot to play and execute it.
‘‘The academic term for this is ‘perceptual decision-making’ and it is fast and unconscious. The movement [footwork] and head/gaze behaviours the best players deploy will be related to and facilitate this perception. This is known as perception-action coupling.’’
Anticipation, Brandon says, sets in with anything above medium-fast, or 80mph.
To prepare for such hellish tests, Geoffrey Boycott would practise at an adapted coaching venue in Rothwell, Yorkshire by shortening the pitch to 20 yards and asking good club bowlers to bounce him. He says it was the only way he could replicate Michael Holding or Lillee. ‘‘The ball over your head - no problem,’’ Boycott told me. ‘‘It was the ones at collarbone or throat height. They were awkward.’’
A more positive view of the possibilities comes from Michael Vaughan, England’s winning captain in 2005. ‘‘Coming to Australia is one of the easiest places to prepare to play, because you know what the Kookaburra ball is going to do,’’ Vaughan says. ‘‘You know the first 20 overs are the hardest to bat. The longer you survive, you get the bowlers into the second, third and fourth spells, and by then you’ve been in there for 30 to 40 overs on these true wickets. You should be able to capitalise.
‘‘The gameplan is simple. The first spell, you should give to the bowlers. Let the ball go through to the keeper. Then you start expanding your stroke play. The way you prepare for that is in your mind. You’ve got to arrive in Australia and see your innings before you play it. Facing quick bowling, a lot of it is mental and technical, but you need courage. You’ve got to be prepared to wear a few.’’