No, you've gone on a tangent focusing solely on the wobble seam when it was part of a larger point. I can't do much if people here decide to forget how to read or watch everything to only focus on random nitpicks.
If one is seen more than the other at Test cricket, is it not more effective? Especially when it's not as difficult to use.
Nah the wobble seamer has genuinely revolutionised old ball bowling in the last decade on spicy pitches. Anderson and Broad haven't really gotten 1000+ wickets between them through hooping swing so much as mastering the wobble seamer. It's pretty much impossible to play if you can master it. Those two pioneered it, but everyone does it now.
My point only addressed your claims with respect to wobble seam versus reverse swing, and relating their use to the formats where they are most common. Although it does tie in with your conceit that modern bowlers are more 'effective', I was only talking about that specific point. There's nothing wrong with that.
Clearly, reverse swing is more effective.
Bit rich coming from an illiterate tbf.
Yeah, it is a good variation right now coz with the more prominent seams across all makes of the cricket ball and with more bowler friendly conditions, it adds a dimension where even the bowler is not sure what the ball will do. And as it always is in test cricket, its easier to recover from a bad ball more than a bad shot.
Very much depends on the pitch. On a lot of current day pitches, the wobble seamer is absolutely more effective because you can use it from overs 20 to about 60 with effectiveness, rather than waiting hours for a single ten hour burst when the ball is just right.
Yeah there seemed to be a time when reverse swing was possible in any ground anywhere in the world but now we are seeing more and more that we need harder surfaces and grounds and a **** load of very precise work on the ball within the permitted margins of the law to get it. Last year's Oval test was a very good example when they needed the ball to get pretty old almost 50+ I think AND Jadeja bowling it into the pitch to hit one side AND throwing the ball on the bounce off the square while hitting that one side for them to get it going.
Is that really what they were doing, though? Based on the Ashes series I've watched, I'd dispute that characterisation.
If you find the scans from The Bowler's Art, you can see a bewildering variety of grips. Even as swing became more prominent, bowlers didn't forget cutters and slower balls. I remember reading an interview where a team-mate noted Jeff Thomson usually bowled two or three cutters an over, much of the reason being to survive the eight-ball over without overexpenditure of effort.
Cummins has said many times that the wobble seamer is his principal weapon with the old ball iirc.
www.espncricinfo.com
What the hell are you on about? On spicy pitches the ball remains new for far longer, that's why the Clouderson meme exists. And they pioneered nothing. Bowlers have made the ball jag off the pitch since they started bowling overarm. Brian Statham averaged 16 in First Class cricket doing it. Ambrose and Walsh certainly didn't have the seam dead straight and steady when sending down their deliveries with ludicrous amounts of movement on them.
The wobble seamer definitely wasn't around before about 2008-09 (I think Asif might have been the one who started the trend, but he got banned so). McGrath said he hadn't even heard of it during his career. It's explicitly not a cutter.
I suspect that's the case but it's not necessary. The reason I say Anderson is probably most responsible for its prominence is because he was so unexpectedly effective with it in the 2010-11 Ashes on pitches which weren't exactly greentops (though they were a bit juicier than the complete roads that were the norm in Australia in those days)
I would still dispute that it's the way they've been picking up wickets, with some new technique. Broad I can see a case for, because I know he regularly uses different variations such as leg-cutters that barely any Test bowlers seem to be bothered using these days. From what he mentions, not using the wrist is indeed new to me, but gripping the ball deeper is not a new technique by any stretch of the imagination, even if people didn't ascribe to it the same effects as they do now. Furthermore, Bob Simpson reckoned swing bowlers should bowl with their fingers slightly apart, though I don't remember how far or why he thought it was better.Cummins has said many times that the wobble seamer is his principal weapon with the old ball iirc.
How Peter Siddle put the wobble back into Australia's attack
The adoption of a key skill has helped propel Australia to the Ashes, and it's one that England recently mastered
Broad is probably the bowler most associated with it. It's not just bowling with a scrambled seam but bowling a seam-upright ball with your fingers slightly split around the seam, then delivering it so the seam doesn't stay absolutely upright but "wobbles" slightly from side to side, a bit like a spinning top, so the ball will have a tendency to seam sharply in one direction or the other depending on whether it lands just slightly on one side of the seam or the other. From all reports, it's not at all easy to bowl with the level of control necessary to be effective:
e: wrong video
Never said it was a cutter. To me it seems someone reified a normal, often accidental, part of bowling as something special. Footage good enough to show the seam has only been around since the late nineties yet in my doing nothing more than casually watching highlights, wickets from the ball moving with a non-steady seam are dime-a-dozen. Just because it wasn't (over)analysed doesn't mean it wasn't happening.
