By the way, while going through articles on Mailey for another thread today, I came across a bit of writing that is very close to my heart.
I have always been amazed at how swing bowling has become such a preciously rare "art" in this day and age. I remember Tendulkar talking once of how Zaheer was 'gifted' with the ability to swing the ball. Others talk of natural swing and losing the swing and so on. I may be 62 but I am not from another century than those plying and watching the game today. In the mid sixties when I started playing first grade cricket in Delhi, every single bowler who used the new ball in our club nets, swung it either in or out. They combined it with the cutter going the other way. The in-swing bowlers bowled leg cutters and the out-swing bowlers bowled off cutters. This was not considered a miracle. Every senior division new ball bowler one faced as an opener swung the ball. You wouldn't be allowed to get close to a new ball and "waste it" (as our coach would admonish) if you bowled without movement in the air.
What has happened? How come so many new ball bowlers, not club cricketers like my mates in the sixties, but first class cricketers and some internationals as well do not swing the new ball in the air. So rare has it become that when someone comes along and does it combining late movement in the air it with decent line and length, most batsmen are at sea. As an opener in club cricket, I faced bowlers, of varying pace, swing the new ball in Delhi's winter mornings while the air was damp and their was mist/fog in the early morning air. With a new ball taken in an innings that started later in the day, it swung a bit less but swing it did.
Here is what Cardus wrote in the 1930's on what he calls the "tyranny of the seam" as bowler after bowler swung the ball in the air and the art of spinning and breaking off the wicket seamed to have taken a back seat. The piece of writing is about Arthur Mailey, a precocious spinner of the leg break but Cardus starts such . . . and you will be scandalised at what he says . . .
It is generally agreed nowadays that the most harmful obsession ever to afflict cricket is the tyranny of the seam, the persistent mania of swing bowling, more or less dependent for success on the new ball. No great skill is required to manipulate the seam. At any rate, it is a kind of bowling not difficult to exploit with effect by any strong armed young man after a year or two of practice. But the worst thing to be said of seam bowling is that it is boring to watch, mechanical and, at bottom, unimaginative and inartistic.
Wow! What the hell is he talking about ? "Most harmful obsession", "persistent mania of swing" and "boring to watch" . . . !! Why is he talking such rubbish?
Because everyone was bowling it that's why.
When Barnes started to move the ball in the air in the early years of the 20th century and till the first world war, it was not swung with the kind of actions we are now familiar with. This man bowled fast leg breaks in a manner that the seam remained, throughout its flight path, facing leg slip. The result was that it started to swing in to the batsman and then after pitching it would break away and move to slips. That swing in the air was difficult to achieve by Barnes' methods. The regular swing by "manipulating the seam" was not yet common place in the cricket world. Freaks like Bart King of Philadelphia had shown it and bamboozled international cricketers but it remained a largely unknown and unexploited craft. In the second decade of the century some bowlers started moving the ball in the air and then came the first WW. After it ended in 1919 English county cricket saw many bowlers who started exploiting the seam and soon it was common place. Like everything new, it had caught everyone's fancy and like the googly in its early years, bowling it was easier and controlling it took slightly longer. The number of fast medium bowlers who swung the ball began to rise in county cricket and then it was normal for anyone using the new ball to swing it till the ball lost its shine and the seam got flatter. In England that took longer so the breed flourished more but the skill spread and at every level.
Why have we lost it? Why is swinging the ball considered such a 'gift' ? I will tell you what. We have come to accept the deviation from the basic bowling action, side on, leading arm high, bowling arm following through across the body and all that, as no big deal. There were people who bowled with unorthodox actions in all eras but they were few, rare and clearly identified as such. Like Malinga's unorthodox round arm action is recognised as such and, at least so far, one has not seen clones mushrooming.
Today, classical bowling actions are rare. Just 45 years ago, even in club cricket in Delhi one saw it in the nets of grade sides. The change is dramatic and disconcerting.
Imran's piece on how he worked on correcting his action is an eye opener and that was three decades ago. Fortunately there were people like John Snow around to point it out to him and work on it. How is it going to happen today. An unorthodox bowling action is no more unorthodox. This is a tragedy for the game is not evolving by moving away from the basics. The same applies to the refusal of modern day youngsters to learn correctly the art of playing off the back foot.
The coaches . . . are there any who care or dare explain that there is the correct grammar of the art of batting bowling (and keeping) which one must know and THEN there is the individual nuanced deviation from it . . and the reasons for the grammar being what it is and the consequences of the deviations . . . I doubt it.
