RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
Archer will pepper Smith with short balls… and hopefully the Aussie will malfunction
IDOn’t care how good a batsman you are, or how comfortable you are against the short ball — if you get the kind of working-over Jofra archer gave Steve Smith at Lord’s, it’s going to play on your mind the next time you meet.
Smith will have gone to bed last night in Manchester knowing exactly what is coming when it’s his turn to bat today or tomorrow. after being hit on the arm, then on the side of the neck, he knows he’s in for a peppering — and that takes guts to deal with, even if you’re averaging 63 in test cricket.
it’s one thing to know what’s coming, it’s another thing to react to it. and that’s where archer’s unique action makes things extra difficult for batsmen. Basically, his bouncer seems to come from nowhere. there’s no discernible change of action, no clue at all that he’s about to bowl short.
i’ve likened it to facing a bowling machine when the ball’s coming down at 80mph, then one of your team-mates turns it up to 95mph without telling you. You’re like: where did that come from?
it’s no coincidence that archer has spent the summer hitting good batsmen on the head, starting with South africa’s Hashim amla at the Oval in the first game of the World Cup. amla was about two seconds late on his pull shot — and that was because there had been no tell- tale sign that a bouncer was on its way.
in my time, the fast bowler who was hardest to read was Wasim akram, who had such a quick arm action that he could hit you on the foot or the head with no obvious change in action. and he’d reverseswing it at 90mph.
that said, there’s talk about the Old trafford pitch being fast and bouncy, and sometimes that can make your decision- making against the short-pitched delivery a bit more straightforward.
You might, for instance, just sway out of the way, which is easier when the bounce is more predictable than it was at Lord’s. the australians are also more used to bouncy surfaces than what they’ve played on so far in this series, because they’re accustomed to the extra pace back home.
and, as we’ve so often seen with Smith — who returned to the top of the iCC test rankings yesterday — he’s a fine problem-solver. He’ll have thought through the various scenarios that await him.
that’s why i think it would be a mistake for archer to just go short at him the whole time. He’s better than a bang- it- in- Billy, as he showed at Headingley, and Joe root shouldn’t make the mistake of asking him to be england’s enforcer, as alastair Cook once did with Stuart Broad. as much as anything, it takes away the surprise value of the short ball.
in the first two tests, Smith showed that he was able to adjust his game according to what england were bowling at him. if they bowled outside off-stump, he left it. if they set a leg slip, he worked them for a single to midwicket. if they bounced him, he got out of the way — except when archer was bowling.
So if root does set a field for short-pitched bowling and tells archer to go at him, he should give his bowler the leeway to adapt, too. if he reckons Smith is moving across his stumps, he shouldn’t be afraid to fire in a leg- stump yorker. and if his footwork is a bit tentative, give him a knuckle ball, which is slower.
there was a terrific passage of play at Lord’s where archer did just that. in the space of a couple of overs, he hoodwinked Smith outside off-stump with a well disguised knuckle ball, then aimed
for leg- stump. and that was in between all the short stuff. If you become too predictable, smith will work you out, because he’s a bit of a machine. The key to getting him out is to make the machine malfunction — to take it out of its comfort zone. archer will need to have two or three different plans.
michael holding always says the wicket-taking ball is not the short one, but the ball after the short one, when the batsman may be in two minds about what’s coming next and where to commit his weight. If smith is hesitant against archer, it could be England’s way into this australia line-up.
Either way, we’re in for another thrilling battle.