How to bowl fast in Sri Lanka? Attitude, guts and funky fields

Donald explains why fitness, adaptability and fuller lengths can help quicks thrive on unforgiving subcontinent

‘Irate Sri Lanka as the toughest place for a seam bowler,” says Allan Donald, the former South African great. “If you have to pick one country I would say Sri Lanka because the heat and the pitches are just so unfriendly.”

For a fast bowler, nowhere is more onerous than the subcontinent – and Sri Lanka’s pitches and humidity render it the most extreme test, a place in which many of the tenets of fast bowling elsewhere must essentially be unlearnt.

“It is a hell of a place to play,”says Donald, who took 36 wickets in Asia at 20 apiece. “It’s physically the most demanding place to bowl. Everything you have learnt about the red-ball game comes out. You need to be very smart.”

The differences begin with the new ball. It both seams and swings less in Asia than England; the heat and humidity mean that it loses its shine quicker. Bowling with the new ball on the subcontinent, Donald had a simple mantra: “Be prepared to get driven” by bowling a fuller length.

Stuart Broad made good on Donald’s advice during the opening Test in Sri Lanka. He focused on making the batsmen play more than in previous trips to the subcontinent; Sri Lanka’s batsmen left only four balls in his five-over spell with the new ball, and Broad snared two wickets.

Yet if demands on quick bowlers are different from the first delivery, it is in their second and third spells that the contrasts are amplified.

“That’s when things start to get interesting,” Donald says. “The real art is how clever and smart are you with the old ball?” Once the shine wears off, quicks need to resort to “funky fields”, Donald says. “You have to be more proactive, where you want guys to hit in the air.”

Donald believes the ideal length to bowl in Asia varies by the phase of the innings. Quicks should be fuller with the new ball, then slightly shorter when movement has stopped, and then fuller again when there is a hint of reverse swing.

Olly Stone, who is likely to play tomorrow, recognises the scope of these challenges. “The ball doesn’t offer too much through the air – so it’s more off the pitch,” he says. “So if you’re slightly shorter with a bit less pace in the wicket it’s easier for the batter, but at the same time there’s that small margin for error of not being too full.”

Yet while fast bowlers must adapt throughout the innings one thing remains the same: the value of extra pace, which is one reason why Stone, who has been clocked at 93.8mph, has been taken on tour.

Paradoxically, in Test cricket in England, faster is not better: deliveries from 74 to 82mph are more effective than ones above 87mph, with those between 82 and 87mph the most effective of all. But in Asia, faster is better: as quick bowlers’ deliveries become more rapid, so they become more effective.

“That extra pace is just the X-factor,” Donald says. “One thing you can’t be if you go to the subcontinent is unfit. You need to be gutsy and you need to go there with a hell of an attitude. More than anything else, it tests your mental capabilities.”