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Swinging both ways

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
No, I'm not talking about Mrs Hadlee, I'm wondering who has shown the greatest mastery of both inswing and outswing.

My nomination goes to Jimmy Anderson who, for all his many faults, is able to bowl huge outswingers and inswingers with both the new ball and (using reverse swing) the old ball.

Apart from him, the obvious candidates are Marshall and Wasim.

Any others?
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Anderson's certainly the best both-ways swinger - that is, conventional wise - I've seen in-depth. It's his technique I'm currently attempting to copy in learning to get the ball to go both ways myself.

Waqar Younis - and Imran Khan before him - swung the new ball out prodigiously and the old ball in every bit as prodigiously. With both of them, though, you knew which way it was going to go depending on what age the ball was. That didn't, of course, make them remotely easy to play.

Pride of place, however, goes to Wasim Akram. Along with Simon Jones, oh-so-briefly, he is the only bowler I've ever seen who could swing new ball in or out and old ball in or out, to order. Just rather a shame he so often chose to bowl short with the new ball and rough it up to old quickly.
 

zaremba

Cricketer Of The Year
One of the great things about Jimmy Anderson is that he always tries to bowl outswing with the new ball, both to right- and left-handers. In other words, he bowls completely different stock balls depending on the handedness of the batsman. That is damn impressive. I've never seen anyone do that before.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
I just wish he'd damn well go around-the-wicket when he's bowling outswingers to LHBs. The outswinger is so much less effective when angled accross the batsman.

If you're swinging in, angle it accross (even if that means as a right-armer going around-the-wicket to a right-hander). If you're swinging it out, angle in. Always. And the more you're swinging, the wider on the crease you want to bowl.

Anderson excels in this area too. It's astonishing how instinctively well he seems to understand bowling, yet how incredibly long it's taken him to actually get that good at it. And that still after having done so his figures are moderate.
 

FBU

International Debutant
I just wish he'd damn well go around-the-wicket when he's bowling outswingers to LHBs. The outswinger is so much less effective when angled accross the batsman.

If you're swinging in, angle it accross (even if that means as a right-armer going around-the-wicket to a right-hander). If you're swinging it out, angle in. Always. And the more you're swinging, the wider on the crease you want to bowl.

Anderson excels in this area too. It's astonishing how instinctively well he seems to understand bowling, yet how incredibly long it's taken him to actually get that good at it. And that still after having done so his figures are moderate.
Well he had to bowl for a couple of years with an remodelled action and be a drinks waiter.

According to Holding Anderson finds it hard to bowl around the wicket to left handers because of his bowling action.
 

oitoitoi

State Vice-Captain
Well there's been quite a few players who could swing it both ways, however as you mentioned mastery that really does narrow it down a lot. My nomination would be Akram, they didn't call him the King of Swing for nothing. I'll never forget that ball to Allan Lamb in the '92 WC. Waqar swung it prodigiously too though it was with the old ball that he was especially dangerous. Malcolm Marshall could do it all. Imran Khan swung it both ways beautifully. Botham and Kapil Dev were very good exponents of conventional swing too. There have been a number of decent swing bowlers, Hoggard, Sidebottom briefly and Zaheer Khan recently. Anderson can swing it both ways nicely given the conditions, but his hideous inconsistency holds him back, personally I believe it's because of his action, it's conducive to swing but difficult to repeat. I thought Jason Gillespie given the conditions could swing it both ways well. Shoaib Akhtar could be absolutely deadly with those inswinging yorkers and high speed away swingers, though again I'd say he was stronger with the old ball. I'm not sure Shane Bond swung the ball back in too much but his away swinger was awesome. I've seen few bowlers with as much control over swing as Chaminda Vaas, often forgotten but he could move it both ways pretty much on a string at times.
 

oitoitoi

State Vice-Captain
I just wish he'd damn well go around-the-wicket when he's bowling outswingers to LHBs. The outswinger is so much less effective when angled accross the batsman.

If you're swinging in, angle it accross (even if that means as a right-armer going around-the-wicket to a right-hander). If you're swinging it out, angle in. Always. And the more you're swinging, the wider on the crease you want to bowl.

Anderson excels in this area too. It's astonishing how instinctively well he seems to understand bowling, yet how incredibly long it's taken him to actually get that good at it. And that still after having done so his figures are moderate.
That's a lot more difficult to do than you would imagine, a lot of bowlers going round find it hard to swing the ball away when pitching it in the channel, that's why when they do go round they often give too much width looking for swing.
 

martin88

Banned
Zaheer Khan is definitely a candidate for displaying the skill among the current crop of bowlers. His spell of 3/0 in 4 balls, accounting for Haddin with a ripping inswinger, followed by making White nick behind with an outswinger and clean bowling Lee with one that seamed away the next ball, on the 5th day at Mohali last year, bears ample testimony to this.
 

sudhindra9

School Boy/Girl Captain
Bets Swing Bowlers n the World playin now

James Anderson
Zaheer Khan
Irfan Pathan
Praveen Kumar
Ryan Sidebottom
Matthew Hoggard
Md.Asif
Chaminda Vaas
Shane Bond
Dale Steyn
Jerome Taylor
 

Uppercut

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Nathan Bracken hoops it big both ways in the right conditions. Probably helped by the fact that he bowls a good bit slower than Jimmy.
 

BoyBrumby

Englishman
Marshall for my money. I remember reading in Simon Hughes's A Bit of Hard Yakka that, so complete was his mastery of the art, that he would actually tell batsmen how he was going to dismiss them, rather like a pool player nominating a pocket. If memory serves he told Gatting he was going to get him with the three card tick (outswinger, outswinger, inswinger) and, true to his word, the Middlesex trencherman was palpably LBW three balls later.

Tragic loss to the sport. :(
 

vic_orthdox

Global Moderator
Damien Fleming could do it, but generally relied more on outswinger plus an off-cutter. Matthew Inness was a very good exponent of it.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
According to Holding Anderson finds it hard to bowl around the wicket to left handers because of his bowling action.
Yes, you're right - I'd forgotten about that.

He'd have to do an incredible amount of swaying around to avoid running on the danger (protected as it now is) area. And this is after having to modify his followthrough in 2003 to avoid running on it from over-the-wicket.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
There have been a number of decent swing bowlers, Hoggard, Sidebottom briefly and Zaheer Khan recently. Anderson can swing it both ways nicely given the conditions, but his hideous inconsistency holds him back, personally I believe it's because of his action, it's conducive to swing but difficult to repeat. I thought Jason Gillespie given the conditions could swing it both ways well. Shoaib Akhtar could be absolutely deadly with those inswinging yorkers and high speed away swingers, though again I'd say he was stronger with the old ball. I'm not sure Shane Bond swung the ball back in too much but his away swinger was awesome. I've seen few bowlers with as much control over swing as Chaminda Vaas, often forgotten but he could move it both ways pretty much on a string at times.
I've never seen Shoaib swing the old ball out or the new ball in. He's basically the same as Waqar and Imran in that he swung both old and new ball prodigiously, but which way it went depended on whether the swing was conventional or reverse.

Bond is a strange one. First time I saw him I thought his stock-ball was the outswinger, but eventually it became clear it was the inswinger. Sometimes I got the impression he was really trying to swing it away but just couldn't do it, his natural inswinger was just too strong.

Can't say I ever saw Jason Gillespie bowl an inswinger TBH. Not to say he never did.

Hoggard and Sidebottom have both struggled considerably with their inability to bowl the one that curves into a like-hander (ie, Sidebottom bowl an outswinger to a RHB, Hoggard bowl an inswinger to a RHB). They can make it go the other way with reverse-swing, but both only get minimal amounts of reverse-swing, compared to the lavish conventional-swing both can muster almost without trying.

Zaheer Khan, though, is (now - he wasn't for most of his career) almost a latter-day Wasim, without the accuracy or the pace. He can swing new ball in and out; he can swing old ball in and out; he's a left-armer, and best of all he can bowl around- or over-the-wicket to equal effect.

Chaminda Vaas only ever bowls inswingers. New or old ball. He's a remarkable case. I've never seen someone be able to swing the new and old ball in the same direction but not the other direction, with either. What makes him so special (when on-song) is his ability to cut the ball off the pitch without losing any pace. And he can cut it in or out.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Johnson appears be getting there...
Does Johnson actually bowl an outswinger, as such? I've only ever seen him - like Michael Kasprowicz before him (and obviously in the other direction as Kasprowicz was a right-armer) - bowl the swinger in one direction and the cutter in the other.

And more oddly still, with the cutter being the stock-ball and the swinger the change-up.
 

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