Shoaib's slower ball

[Jono]

Absolutely nothing wrong with it, other than its ability to destroy the England batting.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Absolutely nothing wrong with it, other than its ability to destroy the England batting.

Yeah, fair enough for my money. He certainly made poor old MPV look a tad foolish with his dismissal.

Has he developed it recently? Or at least refined it? I can't recall him ever bowling it with such regularity until this series. Of course that may simply be because he realised our batters were pretty ill-equipped to play it.

Obviously it's disappointing to me as an Englishman that we lost, but it is nice to see a champion fast bowler performing as consistently & whole-heartedly as Shoaib did in this series. He has (or possibly Woolmer & Inzi have) got his head "right". Let's hope he can continue in this vein.

 

[Autobahn]

Nah SJS is talking about how it's not a "classic" slower ball which aims to be as similar to the stock delivery as possible, instead he gets almost a balloon-style effect which looks very different to his stock delivery.

Mind you the reason he got the wickets is because his used his well-known noterity for speed.

Agarkar did a similar thing in the sri lanka series:

45.4 Agarkar to Maharoof, OUT: got'm! fulltoss and that's a slower
delivery, a real slow one, Maharoof swings across and is beaten by
miles, ball hits the stumps on the full - that's Agarkar's third
wicket - Sri Lanka six down

The best slower ball i've seen was Mark Ealham playing for Nottinghamshire in the CC at Kent, they showed on the telly how the only difference between them was that he didn't flick his wrist forward a bit during the slower one.

Took them several replays as well to spot it as well

 

[open365]

SJS,are you saying that Shoaib bowls with a slower arm speed for his slower ball?

From what i saw he kept the same arm speed and just let the ball slip.

From my experience as a cricketer at an admitedly low level,the best slower balls come from people with really quick arm actions. Like Shoaib,their arm moves so fast through delivery that you kind of expect the ball to come the same speed and when it doesn't you train of thought gets messed up.

But thinking about Shoaib's,they do seem a lot different to other peoples,when you see other bowlers-Harmison for example-the batsman(Clarke) seemed to spot it but still play to early to leg,like he was trying to play noramally.

When Shoaib bowls them,the batsman all look completely clueless and just wait like a lemon for the ball to arrive.

 

[magsi23]

Nothing wrong with it whatsoever, its like spinners bowling flipper(shane warne does it often) is that illegal too?

 

[honestbharani]

I have seen Shane Warne "chuck" bouncers at Laxman during that Kolkata innings....

But to reply to the topic, I think there is nothing wrong with it. And I hope he doesn't overuse it. It is always good when the surprise weapons are used as the surprise weapons. There was a time when Saqlain started bowling doosras as his stock delivery.

 

[Top_Cat]

But to reply to the topic, I think there is nothing wrong with it. And I hope he doesn't overuse it. It is always good when the surprise weapons are used as the surprise weapons. There was a time when Saqlain started bowling doosras as his stock delivery.

Couldn't imagine Shoaib charging in 30 metres every time just to throw down the funny red thing at 110km/h though!

 

[nightprowler10]

I must say you are probably right about his slower delivery.

I am going more by the difference between his slower and normal delivery while the fact that so many batsmen failed to pick it up would show that inspite of the less than subtle nature (purely from speed differential) it is not easy to pick by a difference in action, if any. In fact it wasnt picked up by many England batsmen. Thats what matters in the end.

I was wrong I suppose.

The thing I've noticed about his slower ball is that it actually decieves the batsman not just with the variation of speed, but also because it seems to dip a bit like a baseball's sinker. At least thats what got Bell, IMO.

 

[nightprowler10]

There was a time when Saqlain started bowling doosras as his stock delivery.

That spelled his downfall.

 

[SJS]

SJS,are you saying that Shoaib bowls with a slower arm speed for his slower ball?

.

It looks like that but it may not be. Many dont think so. But what IS different is the trajectory. He DOES 'throw up' the ball. I think it would be difficult to do without a reduced arm speed just before actual delivery. Again I could be wrong.

This makes it difficult to control not just in the speed that you end up with but the length and invariably (though not always) would be pitched further up. Slower short pitched deliveries can be equally lethal.

The classical slower delivery is one where nothing changes except the grip on the ball. One of the first I read about was of holding only half the 'sphere' that is the cricket ball. Which means the index finger (with the middle finger very adjacent to it) and the thumb virtually encircle the 'equator' or seam of the ball and the rest of the hand is on one side of it. This way by putting in exactly the same effort you put in much less force into into it. It required some practice to ensure the same line since the ball would tend to move towards the slip region in trajectory (assuming a right handed batsman and bowler). But when mastered it could be swung like the normal delivery at slower pace. This can be used by both in swing and out swing bowlers but I have found it works better for in swingers since you can get a leg cutter going with it that adds to the variant. Requires a lot of practice but is great when mastered.

There are variants like the 'split finger' where the index finger and the middle finger are un-naturally wide spread across the ball causing a part of the ball to stick through the two fingers on the side of the bowler. This has the same effect as the first one and is better controlled for line. You see Zoysa and Fernando employing it a lot. This also seems to impart a degree of back spin on the ball. This is easier to bowl but rarely allows much else to be done with it since a cutter would require a better (closer) grip between the index and middle fingers. But with a new ball and a good bowling action you could swing it in the air a bit and move it off the pitch if you could manage to retain integrity of the seam position during flight.

I have seen some bowlers experiment with the ball pushed right back into the palm in league cricket in Delhi in the early 70's. This made it difficult to release the ball at the right time. Invariably it was released too late and was much too short and a correction in that ended up in full tosses. But sometimes it did come out right. But you could put no other work on the ball as regards movement.

 

[SJS]

The thing I've noticed about his slower ball is that it actually decieves the batsman not just with the variation of speed, but also because it seems to dip a bit like a baseball's sinker. At least thats what got Bell, IMO.

Yes. Thats right. They did not seem beaten as much by the lower speed as by the fact that having discovered, halfway through whatever they were planning to do, that it was a slower delivery, they did not know what to do with it since it was SO different. It has a similar effect on batsmen as the ball that slips out of the hands of a fast bowler who has been bowling an accurate hostile spell and suddenly there is this ball which from a non regular part time bowler would have been propmptly hit out of the ground. The batsmen are taken aback by everything including the parabola which makes it 'sink' as you say.

Again, I could be wrong. This is how it looks to me. This doesnt claim to be an authentic record of what actually happens.

 

[Jono]

In the end, Shoaib dismissed 3 English batsman with the slower ball in one innings, which greatly aided Pakistan's march towards victory in the 3rd test. It obviously works.

 

[SJS]

In the end, Shoaib dismissed 3 English batsman with the slower ball in one innings, which greatly aided Pakistan's march towards victory in the 3rd test. It obviously works.

Oh yes, it does and beautifully......for now.

If he doesnt over do it, it will work in the future too.

 

[Jono]

No doubt, but I'd say thats the same for every 'special' ball in cricket. If Warne bowled his flipper once every over I'm sure it wouldn't have been the weapon it became.

 

[SJS]

No doubt, but I'd say thats the same for every 'special' ball in cricket. If Warne bowled his flipper once every over I'm sure it wouldn't have been the weapon it became.

I meant, he (Shoaib) is probably bowling it a bit too much already.

I would like to see what happens if he over-bowls it against India. Maybe he will have the same level of success but........I am not so sure

Shoaib is child-like. He has got this toy and is soooo pleased with it. I hope he doesnt break it.

 

[marc71178]

I meant, he (Shoaib) is probably bowling it a bit too much already.

From reports he did seem to bowl a fair few didn't he?

He also needs to work a bit on the control of the slower ball I believe - didn't a few slip out at waist height?

 

[nightprowler10]

From reports he did seem to bowl a fair few didn't he?

He also needs to work a bit on the control of the slower ball I believe - didn't a few slip out at waist height?

He bowls a couple every spell. You saw more of it in the last spell probably because he was working on the tail-enders. But I agree, he needs to make sure he doesn't over use it. And you're absolutely right about the control part. I saw atleast two slip out against Hoggard and Plunkett, the latter one actually got him a wicket since it was swinging back in to the leg stump and hit Plunkett right on the pad. Hoggard almost got out as well. He ducked thinking it was gonna go way over his head, but it was a slow one and it dipped at the last second missing the bails by less than an inch.

 

[Jono]

From reports he did seem to bowl a fair few didn't he?

He also needs to work a bit on the control of the slower ball I believe - didn't a few slip out at waist height?

Lol does anyone remember Hoggard's reaction to the 2nd one that slipped, in which he ducked it and it almost took off the top of the stumps. His laugh was one of the funniest things ever.

Hoggard is hilarious when batting considering the fact he laughs at fast bowlers like Shoaib and Lee

 

[marc71178]

He plays the game in the right spirit does our Hoggy!

I remember back to the Ashes when McGrath beat him 4 or 5 times in an over and Hoggy just stood there laughing at him - even McGrath couldn't help but laugh back.

Then later in the game he was doing the same thing to McGrath and they repeated the action.

It's amazing considering how tense a series that Ashes was, just how good a spirit it was played in.

 

[honestbharani]

Couldn't imagine Shoaib charging in 30 metres every time just to throw down the funny red thing at 110km/h though!

lol, but wouldn't it be a funny sight?