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| Saturday, 20 March 2004 |
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Mystery balls and all that by Bob Simpson After watching the first two one-day internationals between Sri Lanka and Australia, I am sure that Muttiah Muralitharan is as big a trickster as Shane Warne. For almost a decade, prior to the start of each season, Shane would announce he would be introducing a mystery ball.
The media fell for it every season and the mystique of Shane Warne grew bigger each year. In reality there was never a mystery ball. While Shane may have fine-tuned some of his variations, I don't believe he added any mystery ball from the time he became the world's finest leg-spinner in the early '90s. I believe the same thing applies to Muralitharan. Murali developed his variety of the leg-spinner after seeing Pakistan's off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq bamboozling the world's best batsmen in the late '90s with a ball that spun away from the right-handers. He was a sensation and the envy of all off-spinners in the world. Immediately, all orthodox off-spinners tried to copy Saqlain. He was quite happy to pass on the know-how to his fellow-tweakers and within months every off-spinner privy to this information was trying to introduce this delivery to his own range. Only two - Murali and India's Harbhajan Singh - succeeded to any great degree. Murali's mystery ball is a hybrid of Saqlain's discovery. One of the mysteries to me is why so many batsmen are having trouble picking it. The giveaway to me is that the ball comes differently and higher out of the fingers of the bowler. Murali has added a quicker variation, but it still has a very different flight pattern to his normal off-spinner and arm ball. English batsmen have always had problems with picking spinners and so I can understand the panic in their ranks when they last faced Murali. One of the major problems that the batsmen are having, I believe is they are not watching the ball right out of the bowler's hand. This is a common trend throughout the cricketing world and instead of watching the hand they are only watching an area around the hand. Tests have shown that batsmen pick the ball up about a metre sooner by closely watching the ball out of the hand rather than the general area from where the ball is propelled from. Batsmen can and must watch the bowler's hand, for they will then be able to pick with practice what the bowler is trying to do. It is invaluable to be able to decide very early what the bowler is attempting to do as it gives you more time to get into the right position to counter the delivery. Some batsmen tell me they pick the direction of the spin by the rotation of the ball in the air. I tried this without success probably because I could pick the spin out of the bowler's hand and this gave me a fraction of a minute quicker to plan the counter to the spinner's wiles. Some of the Australian batsmen seem to be picking Murali better. All of them are looking to get down the wicket to him and not allow him to settle into a consistent rhythm and method whereas the English batsmen have allowed Muralitharan to dictate to them by being rooted on the batting crease. The Aussie batsmen by their aggressive action are not allowing the Sri Lankan spin wizard to adopt his usual tactics. Mystery balls have been with us since the laws of the game allowed overarm bowling. Bowlers continually fiddle with grips, finger and wrist action and even tamper with the ball to achieve better results. Allan Connolly, fine new ball bowler for Victoria and Australia in the '60s, was also a baseball pitcher in the off-season. He had a great slower ball which he adapted from the "knocker ball" a long time grip that baseball pitchers used for their slower deliveries. Bowlers have been both successful and distracted by the quest for a mystery ball. For some time after World War II, the flipper was in vogue and was practised with much success by two Austrian expat leg-spinners in English cricket, Bruce Doolan and Geg Pepper. It went out of favour when they retired and virtually remained dormant until Richie Benaud rediscovered it in the late 50s. Richie became infatuated with it and seemed to get more pleasure out of obtaining a wicket with his flipper than getting two or three wickets with normal deliveries. Not long after Richie's love affair with the flipper began, Sir Donalnd Bradman, then an Australian selector, asked me how I thought Richie was bowling. It was a very rare approach by the great man and deserved an honest reply. "Well, Sir Donald," I ventured, "not as well as he used to before he developed the flipper". Sir Donald burst out laughing on hearing this and replied, "The same thing happened to Clarrie (Grimmett). Once he started to bowl the flipper he was never as accurate again. He was still a fine bowler, but not as good as before the flipper". The same thing happened with Richie and while he had some excellent moments they weren't as many as before. The problem with the flipper is that the mechanics are different to every other ball bowled by a leg-spinner. The top-spinner, leg-spinner and googly are bowled either over or out of the side of the finger with basically similar actions. The flipper, on the other hand is delivered under the hand and fingers with a flicking action virtually the same as clicking your thumb and second finger together to obtain a clicking noise. It was said of Clarrie Grimmett that the click of his fingers signalled to the batsmen a flipper was on the way. Why the batsmen should need this signal surprises me, for a flipper is easily read from the hand. Clarrie (The Fox) Grimmett's response to this was to learn to click his left hand and time the click to coincide with the ball leaving his hand whether it was a flipper or not. One of the great problems of "mystery" balls or just your best delivery is in containing the desire to overbowl them. The temptation is always great to overuse your best ball when you are having trouble getting batsmen out. To do so is self-defeating, for over-exposure will quickly give more knowledge to the batsmen and an awareness of how to pick and handle your mystery ball. I must say that there is no greater joy for me than to see a wonderful spinner in action. While there is drama and excitement when the full fury of express bowlers is on view, the subtleness, charm and skill of a great spinner makes great theatre. (The Sportstar) |
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