In a modern game peppered with sixes and slanted towards batters, we need the raw beauty of fast bowling more than ever
T
he ball comes out of his hand at the end of that liquid smooth action. Lissom yet muscular limbs working in unison, it’s so easy on the eye as to be almost laughable. The loping, easy run into the delivery stride, right hip almost knitted to stumps at the non-strikers end. High elbow and rapidly rotating shoulder passing the brim of the umpire’s fedora by barely a millimetre. The ball comes out of his hand at the end of that liquid smooth action and the crowd and the batter hold their breath.
“It was exciting, there was an ‘ooh’ or an ‘aah’ every single over,” said Jofra Archer after his devastating spell of fast bowling reduced South Africa’s top order to rubble in the third one-day international in Southampton last week. England romped to a record 342-run victory in the dead rubber game, Archer finished with 4 for 18 in nine overs. At one point he had four wickets for the cost of five runs, but this was one of those spells of fast bowling where the numbers didn’t even seem to matter.
It’s often said but there is something special about seeing a fast bowler in full flight, at full tilt. Perhaps now more than ever, with bat increasingly dominating ball across the game, with batters peppering the stands and holding the pose, record totals being laid waste and even cherub-faced teenagers lacerating bowlers on the world stage. It is then an enjoyable recalibration to see perennially six-smiting batters “sat down”; even better to witness them hopping around the crease like someone in a beer garden who has accidentally stepped on a spaniel’s tail. Watch as the ball whistles past their nose, jags past the edge of the bat or flies so close to the stumps that it could whisper sweet nothings into the bail groove as it passes on its way to scorch the keeper’s gloves.
