In Gideon Haigh's book Inside Out there's an essay called Fabian Batsmanship, a lovely, subtle piece about the subtlest of arts: leaving the ball. It is, he writes, 'the exchange of an advantage so small as to be in most cases almost immeasurable'. This is brilliant, and true.
That advantage was more palpable than usual on saturday at the Rose Bowl when Kevin Pietersen left the ball with disdainful mastery. Then Kumar Sangakkara stayed inside the line of the swinging delivery so perfectly most of the crowd thought that he was playing and missing until they got home and turned on their televisions for the highlights.
But what is the bowling equivalent of the leave? How do they establish the same kind of tiny but incremental gain over a batsman? It's a pertinent question, especially for Stuart Broad, who is losing some torque on his Test career.
The blunt diagnosis is that he is not taking wickets. Yet unlike a batsman who is not getting runs, a bowler can still have a useful function while they wait for the gods to turn towards them again. They can block up an end, shut up shop and wait - or at least the best of them can. Think of Walsh, or Pollock, or McGrath. When they weren't running through teams - and they didn't always - they ratcheted down into a state of bloody-minded parsimony. They wouldn't have wrung their socks out over you at the end of play, let alone give away a run they didn't have to. They understood that this was their 'leave' - the exchange of an advantage so small as to be immeasurable, and one that would eventually alter the equation back their way.
Stuart Broad, like Steve Harmison before him, lacks that fallback position. When they're getting clouted, they can't seem to stop it happening. Harmi is a speck in the rear view mirror now, and Broad is approaching a crossroads. There are a lot of other quick bowlers coming up behind him. He has already been usurped by Tremlett, and if Onions had stayed fit and in form, Broad may not even be in the side right now.
The rhetoric from Dean Saker is not encouraging. The other day he called Broad 'a warrior'. It suggests that the team management want to massage his ego and still view him as the impact bowler that it's apparent he's not. England really don't need another Harmison. A Shaun Pollock would be infinitely preferable, because Broad has the potential. He just doesn't seem to know where his off stump is at the moment...
Bresnan would have been breathing down his neck if fit, wouldn't he? Bowled so nicely in the World Cup and in the Ashes.
ReplyDeleteThat Saker thing sounded like he was categorising the bowlers in some sort of mythological scale he'd made up, like some form of positive thinking hippy stuff. Whatever works for them, I say.
David Saker, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's true that Flower, Saker and Strauss see Stuart Broad as an impact bowler, and OBs pointing up of the word 'warrior' seems to underline that belief. I would imagine that Broad does see himself in this way. I wonder what he feels when he watches Test highlights and sees that television producers at the beginning of his opening spell introduce him as 'Fast Medium'. Does the 'warrior' kick the closest thing to him and shout "I'm a fast bowler, you idiots".
ReplyDeleteAtherton and Hussain regularly state that Broad has to decide what type of bowler he wants to be: an out-and-out quick or line and length, metronomic fast medium (I think that's their point). At 25, you would expect that issue to have been resolved. Perhaps it has, and if it has the hope must be he will quickly gain that extra pace and with it real venom. Perhaps then a fallback position becomes a little less important.
I am beginning to get bored with the number of times people ask Broad to decide whether he is a shock bowler or a stock bowler...it has been going on right from the outset of his test career. If he does not know now, than he probably never will until injury decides the matter. Broad bowling fast reminds me of those excruciating occasions when Botham would take the new ball and try to bowl fast - leaking runs all over the park to no discernible effect, in effect playing the batsmen into form.
ReplyDeleteWell, I can confidently say I left every ball I ever faced. A lot of them even went on to hit the wickets.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, does anybody else think we're missing Collingwood's bowling more than anything else? He would have been the perfect man to throw a few cutters at the Sri Lankan batsmen who the main bowlers have failed to shift.
ReplyDeleteI will miss Colly, Tim, but probably time to lay him to rest, and recognise his passing with a great service in Durham Cathedral, with a eulogy from Warnie tearfully regretting his sledging at Sydney over the MBE, a 21-gun salute from the Castle walls, and renaming of the Chester-le-Street ground as 'The Emirates Collywobbles'
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