The science (and art) of taming thunderbolts

Defeating Australia’s pacemen is a case of mind over matter, writes Paul Hayward in Perth Mitchell Johnson’s guide on how to bowl at the Waca

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 this week in Perth. A peculiarity of the Ashes in Australia is that it exposes English batsmen to conditions that are largely alien to them in the shires. Only on fast, southern hemisphere tracks would they be consistently tested by balls rising from bouncy wickets at 90mph or more.

To say England succumbed to raw pace in Brisbane and Adelaide would be too simplistic, though speed and bounce 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. Ricky Ponting, the former Australia captain, says: “A lot of the deficiencies you would see in England’s batting on a fast, bouncy Australian pitch were covered up, and weren’t exposed until the second innings in Brisbane, when it quickened up.

“I’ve got a feeling that this is an Australian group on the way up and looking to find their own identity as a group. The fast bowlers are trying to be this menacing group.”

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 definitely 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. None of this has been fully demonstrated by scientists specifically for cricket but it’s well established in neuroscience and psychology as to how the brain/ body works in tasks like batting in cricket.” 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, five days a week, 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.”

The current England side prepared chiefly with “dog stick” deliveries thrown from short range

‘You’ve got to see your innings before you play it – and be prepared to wear a few’

in the nets. “In the future perhaps virtual reality will become a viable preparation platform,” Brandon says. “We have been exploring it but currently there is no fully functioning system good enough for players to use.

“The ‘rational’ decisions you speak of can only happen between shots, for example – analyse the field placings and think of likely deliveries and choose a few shot options. Then the moment the bowler stars running in it will be ‘watch and play’ on automatic, relying on technique and skills. “I think 90mph is one of those convenient round and aspirational numbers we have labelled as ‘properly fast’. However 90mph bowling with no variation on a flat track with even bounce can become easy to play, and can go for lots of runs. Basically, the batter can predict the timing with which the ball will come onto the bat, once they’ve sighted a few deliveries. Variation, disguise and lateral movement is what is challenging about batting, because it makes the prediction less accurate, or harder to make.”

Another 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 game plan is simple. The first spell, you should give to the bowlers. Let the ball go through to the keeper. Play for your off stump. 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.”

That bit is unavoidable, and, for some, part of the thrill. Langer, who admits to finding England’s fast bowling attack in 2005 hard to cope with, will not be dislodged from his love of the kind of deliveries Mitchell Starc, inset left, and Pat Cummins unleash. “You walk across the white line, and you get into the fire – get into the fight,” Langer says. “I miss it.”