Cricket 2.0

by Tim Wigmore

  Statistics played an increasingly prominent role in T20 but among players and teams no number was more regularly referenced than the simple fact that if you took three wickets in the Powerplay you won 69% of the time. This was a statistic that encouraged bowlers to look for wickets in the first six overs. Bowlers who could make early inroads were potential match-winners.

  Dernbach was one bowler heavily influenced by this perspective. ‘You have to go for wickets early on,’ he said. ‘The stats back it up. If you take three wickets in the first six overs then your chance of winning goes up to around 70%. That’s a huge stat. That suggests you should go all out.’

  T20 Win Percentage by Wickets Taken in the Powerplay

  Wickets Taken

  Win Percentage

  0

  32%

  1

  41%

  2

  55%

  3

  69%

  4

  82%

  5

  90%

  The challenge for fast bowlers tasked with taking early wickets was to find the tiny amount of movement that the new ball or the fresh pitch might provide and ensure that if and when that movement arrived the ball was in the right area to find the edge or challenge the stumps. The balls used in T20 swung so little and for such a short period that sometimes the bowler might only get one or two balls where they would find enough movement to challenge the batsmen but if the ball was fractionally too short or fractionally too wide it would be wasted.

  Yet while wickets were precious commodities, the Powerplay fielding restrictions meant the first six overs of the game were a dangerous period for the fielding side. The lack of fielders protecting the boundary meant captains often deployed the fielders in the circle in run-saving positions rather than in catching positions in the slips where they might take catches off any edges the bowler may find. Sometimes fielding captains might only leave a slip in position for one or two deliveries – when the ball was at its freshest – before withdrawing them.

  The conflict between attack and defence was a complex one and different bowlers in different teams opted for different approaches. Dernbach chased wickets.

  ‘At the top of my run-up I’m thinking wickets. That might mean that I am a bit more expensive but I will be willing to gamble on certain deliveries in the hope of getting a wicket in the Powerplay because I think it sets up the game.’

  While Dernbach would opt for aggressive full or short lengths, tempting the batsman to take his own risks, the most consistent Powerplay bowlers were those that combined attack and defence. The success of these bowlers was underpinned by their length: full enough to tempt the drive but neither so full that it was a half-volley nor so short that the batsman could cut or pull. This length was called a ‘good’ length, largely because in first-class cricket – whatever the match situation, it was just that: a good length to bowl. In T20, though, such consistency was only appropriate in the Powerplay, after which unpredictability trumped accuracy.

  This explained why the first excellent generation of Powerplay bowlers were great Test match bowlers: the Sri Lankan Chaminda Vaas, the South African Shaun Pollock and the Pakistani Mohammad Asif were brilliant exponents of control and incision, and all masters in the red-ball format. As the format matured, T20 Powerplay specialists emerged but those who had success in the Powerplay were bowlers of a similar mould. Modern champions included the Australian Jason Behrendorff, the Englishman David Willey and the Jamaican Sheldon Cottrell. All bowled a classic Test match length, and all took wickets at a regular rate but without compromising control.

  All three were also left-armers. The angle posed by left-arm bowlers, going across right-handed batsmen – who made up 72% of top three batsmen – from over the wicket, meant that even when the ball wasn’t swinging they were challenging the outside edge, bringing the wicketkeeper and any slips into play. Left-armers also had the option to change that angle entirely and go round the wicket, angling the ball into the pads of right-handers, something that right-arm bowlers couldn’t do so easily.

  In the 2010 T20 World Cup England selected the left-arm quick Ryan Sidebottom after analysis suggested that left-arm bowlers were more effective in T20 – particularly in the Powerplay. Sidebottom took ten wickets and England won the tournament.

  ‘T20 has changed how left-armers are viewed. You look around the world and most teams have a left-armer,’ said Sidebottom. ‘Left-armers give variety of going over or round the wicket – taking it away from the right-handers so they can only hit on the off side, then coming round the wicket and digging it into the pads.’

  The value of left-arm quicks, and their relative scarcity, made them very popular in drafts and auctions. Sometimes left-armers with inferior records were preferred over right-armers. Two of the three most expensive bowlers sold in IPL auctions have both been left-arm quicks: the Englishman Tymal Mills for £1.4 million in 2017 and the Indian Jaydev Unadkat for £1.25 million in 2018. Both were fine bowlers, yet their value was multiplied by the rarity of the left-arm angle.

  To bypass the lack of movement on offer some bowlers sought other advantages. The Pakistani Sohail Tanvir – also a left-armer – found success with an unusual bowling action that saw him deliver the ball off the wrong foot, the Englishman Dimitri Mascarenhas consistently bowled off-cutters and leg-cutters – subtly deviating the ball off the pitch. Both Tanvir and Mascarenhas found a home at the Rajasthan Royals in the IPL – one of the first teams to encourage and promote unusual talent.

  Height could also be a benefit. The Pakistani giant Mohammad Irfan who was 2.18 metres tall, and Australian Billy Stanlake who was 2.04 metres tall, used their height to extract steep bounce. In the 2018 Caribbean Premier League Irfan bowled the most economical four-over spell in T20 history, not conceding a single run until his final delivery. The wickets of Chris Gayle and Evin Lewis made Irfan’s spell a Powerplay bowler’s dream: both openers dismissed and just a single run conceded.

  Yet, as well as all being defined by their control and movement, the most successful Powerplay bowlers were also marked by their comparative struggle to succeed in other phases of the innings. Behrendorff, Irfan and Stanlake regularly bowled three consecutive overs in the Powerplay and would complete their quota by the end of the middle overs. Their biggest weapon in the Powerplay, their consistency, became their biggest enemy elsewhere, particularly at the death.

  ***

  Dernbach was one of the few bowlers who combined effective Powerplay bowling where attacking skills were most important, with effective post-Powerplay bowling where defensive skills were most important.

  Outside the Powerplay the game changed. Any hint of movement that the new ball might have offered through the air or off the pitch had gone. With five fielders permitted outside the 30-yard circle, ones and twos were readily available and hitting boundaries required less precision and more power. This transformed the nature of the contest.

  ‘At the death it’s a real baseball thing,’ said the batsman Brad Hodge. ‘It’s either going to be a yorker, a slower ball, a length ball or a bouncer. They are the only four options that death bowlers can go to.’

  After the Powerplay, sameness was the enemy for the bowler – regular changes in delivery type complicated the batsman’s attacking process. Slower balls were at the forefront of this zeitgeist, with bowlers seeking to disrupt attacking batsmen through changes in speed that left batsmen far too early on their shots and confounded by the difference in reaction time.

  Not only were slower balls hard to pick but they were hard to play as well. The most fundamental reason for the dominance of spinners in T20 was that they forced batsmen to generate their own pace on the ball. Slower balls – normally between 60 and 75 miles per hour – had exactly the same effect. Around 21% of balls from fast bowlers in T20 were slower balls compared to 13% in 50-over cricket and 3% in first-class cricket. T20 was a boon for those who sought to take pace off the ball with T20 encouraging a coterie of such
bowlers.

  Taking pace off the ball was only part of the challenge; the more difficult part was concealing those balls that did so – and it was here that Dernbach excelled. By releasing his slower ball from the back of his hand Dernbach could take pace off the ball while maintaining an upright seam position as if released from the front of the hand, giving the impression of a conventional delivery before it would suddenly drop late on the unsuspecting batsman. Dernbach flummoxed some of the world’s very best batsmen with the delivery: M.S. Dhoni, whose big backlift often saw him beaten in the flight by the slower ball, was dismissed six times in 14 meetings in international cricket against Dernbach.

  Slower balls were viewed with suspicion by many within the game because they represented a break with traditional coaching structures. Taking pace off the ball and concealing it demanded innovation in grips and release from bowlers that challenged conventional teachings.

  Dernbach – who was born in South Africa to an Italian mother and didn’t move to England until he was 13 – learned his slower ball not from a coaching manual or an academy, but from a junior player at Surrey. ‘I actually saw a kid I played with at Guildford and at Surrey – a guy called Will Sabey – who had this back of the hand slower ball that he was bowling on a Saturday and getting old guys to duck into it left, right and centre. I was watching this thinking I’ve got to try this,’ remembered Dernbach. ‘It was probably two or three years in the making of trial and error hitting the side of the net, the top of the net.’

  Not only did the ball arise from outside coaching systems but those within the system actively discouraged it. ‘I remember during Under-17 games my coach Mickey Powell saying if I bowled another one of those he would kick me somewhere where it might hurt. So there was a lot of work that went into these deliveries so by the time people came to see it, it was four, five years in the making. I really worked hard to identify that. But that’s how it is. You see someone do something and you want to capture what they are capable of doing.’ By the age of 25 Dernbach had earned an England debut in 2011 largely thanks to his back of the hand slower ball.

  Andrew Tye, like Dernbach, also learned his slower ball – a knuckleball – from a teammate in club cricket, rather than from within the professional coaching system. Tye warned of the dangers of over-coaching stifling such innovation. ‘There is a concern now that coaches over-coach,’ Tye reflected. ‘If you’re over-coached from a young age you might start to do something that isn’t natural. And yes, coaches need to be there to imply the basics but at the same time the players need to have their sense of ownership and adventure to be able to experiment and try different things and do things differently because if we are all producing the same sort of bowler then the game isn’t going to grow. You’ve got to set yourself apart from other bowlers so you can actually have an impact on the game.’

  The father of the slower ball was Franklyn Stephenson who played county cricket in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Stephenson was a pace bowler at professional level but occasionally bowled spin when playing league cricket in Lancashire to ease the burden on his body. When bowling spin Stephenson experimented with occasional quicker deliveries with no discernible change in action, a method he inverted when bowling pace. In the late 80s with Nottinghamshire and the early 90s with Sussex, Stephenson’s changes of pace caused havoc in county cricket. Stephenson claimed that 25 of his 125 championship wickets in 1988 were taken using his slower ball.

  Word quickly spread of Stephenson’s new variation. By the late 1990s it became a potent weapon at all levels of the game and all round the world. The growth of limited overs and then T20 – with bowlers seeking to confound attacking batsmen – accelerated its rise. Two of its early masters were Adam Hollioake at Surrey and Ian Harvey at Gloucestershire, who both proved instrumental in periods of dominance for their counties in limited overs cricket in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

  As the benefits of slower balls became ever greater, variations of it emerged which were harder to read and behaved differently through the air and off the pitch. Stephenson’s original slower ball was an off-cutter delivery which involved the bowler running their hand down the side of the ball, taking pace off but also imparting spin which helped it grip and stick in the surface. But for a batsman aware of this ball being in a bowler’s armoury this was fairly easy to spot – both out of the hand and through the air.

  The Australian all-rounder Steve Waugh, whose bowling was a key factor in Australia winning the 1987 50-over World Cup, was the first to experiment with a slower ball released from the back of his hand – later perfected by Dernbach – which was not only harder to read but dipped in the air, bounced more than the off-cutter and forced more miscued shots. Other variations included a split finger slower ball which appeared to float out of the hand; a deep in the fingers slower ball which was released later and perhaps the most difficult to master but the hardest to face: the knuckleball, inherited from baseball and combining a floaty release with unpredictable movements through the air and skiddy bounce off the pitch.

  The Indian fast bowler Zaheer Khan was one of the first exponents of the knuckleball, which – contrary to what its name suggested – did not involve the bowler gripping the ball with his knuckles but saw the ball lodged in the hand by the fingernails which meant the ball was not only released significantly slower but with almost no spin imparted. The lack of spin reduced the magnus effect on the ball and caused it to move unpredictably through the air and often dip on the batsman. ‘It’s a tricky ball to hold in the first place,’ explained England’s Chris Woakes, ‘let alone land it in the place you want to.’

  Mastery of the knuckleball was very difficult but the first two to do so were Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Tye. With a coterie of other variations Tye emerged from the cricketing wilderness, without a professional contract aged 26, and established himself as one of the leading T20 bowlers within three years. In 2018 the only bowler to take more wickets than Tye’s 75 was Rashid Khan.

  The rise of the slower ball bred a range of new and unusual bowlers. Gloucestershire’s Benny Howell became hugely successful by bowling almost exclusively slower balls. With a top speed in the low 80s Howell’s threat came not from the change down in speed but the variety of movement – both in the air and off the pitch – of his different deliveries. His reliance on movement rather than speed change saw Howell describe himself as ‘more of a spinner’ than a pace bowler.

  Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman was an inverse version of Howell, a left-armer who bowled with slower ball grips, primarily the off-cutter, but still released them at high speeds. ‘My flick and rotation of the wrist is different to most bowlers and I can bowl fast cutters as well as slow ones,’ he explained. Mustafizur was a fascinating bowler from the rural town of Satkhira in Bangladesh, who in 2018 travelled to the IPL with a translator, paid for by his team Mumbai Indians, because he could speak almost no English.

  The trouble for bowlers such as Dernbach, Tye and Mustafizur who relied upon the mystery of their slower balls was that familiarity bred understanding among batsmen who would became increasingly adept at identifying variations. This was enhanced by video analysis which enabled batsmen to study bowlers in super-slow motion in an effort to detect clues. After initial periods of success Dernbach, Tye and Mustafizur experienced palpable downturns in their fortunes as batsmen became better at reading and playing their various different deliveries.

  This placed an emphasis on bowlers continuing to evolve. ‘Tye did not become a bad bowler overnight,’ commented Dernbach. ‘He just found that people understand how he bowls more and now he has to find a different way to do things. I can certainly relate to that. When I first came on to the scene I was probably one of the only people to bowl the back of the hand slower ball. It worked for a long period of time but then people found that out.’

  Tye recognised the same challenge. ‘I don’t want to just fizzle out and people say, yeah, he had a really good period he really mastered the knuckleball
but then everyone started bowling the knuckleball and he had nothing else after.’

  Bowlers were constantly fighting to survive. ‘It’s about staying relevant and having an impact in a batsman’s game of being an effective bowler,’ Tye reflected.

  ‘There are many other facets of the game that you can add to,’ said Dernbach. ‘Your yorker then has to become better. Can you be on the money with your bouncer? You can be smarter with your field placings. As a bowler you’ve got to keep developing. If you just get chucked on the heap because you’re not deceiving people and looking amazing then all of a sudden people think you’re not good enough. And I don’t think that’s the case.’

  The one slower ball specialist who most effectively withstood the test of time was the West Indian Dwayne Bravo. By the end of 2018 he had taken 460 wickets: more than any other bowler in T20. Bravo was a fantastically skilled bowler with a skiddy bouncer and several brilliant variations, including wickedly dipping slower balls. Yet perhaps more important than his skills was how and when he deployed them. Intelligence was essential for a pace bowler, particularly in the death overs when the batsmen were looking to hit every ball for six.

  ‘He has played so much cricket – all the information is stored in his memory bank,’ said Simon Katich who coached Bravo at Trinbago Knight Riders. ‘Dwayne is a very clever bowler, he sets his fields and bowls to them very well. He can change from wider yorkers to around-the-wicket leg-stump yorkers to keep the batsman guessing what line he is trying to achieve.’