What should Ishant work on?

[iamdavid]

Indian bowlers tend to slow down rather than speed up when they get older. Case and point is Zaheer Khan (Nehra, and Munaf Patel are also examples)..

Yeah come to think of it you may have a point there...Pathan and Srinath also showed signs of slowing down pretty early in their careers. The general peak in terms of pace (well for bowlers like Lee, Shoaib, Bond anyway) is 26-29 or so...whereas those guys seem thus far to have hit their peaks in pace much earlier...Pathan had his at 20 and Khan his in about 2000 or 2001.

 

[Salamuddin]

Yeah come to think of it you may have a point there...Pathan and Srinath also showed signs of slowing down pretty early in their careers. The general peak in terms of pace (well for bowlers like Lee, Shoaib, Bond anyway) is 26-29 or so...whereas those guys seem thus far to have hit their peaks in pace much earlier...Pathan had his at 20 and Khan his in about 2000 or 2001.

Srinath actually lost his pace much later in his career.

He was pretty quick from age 22-27.

28-33 - he wasn't as fast in this period.

It was after his shoulder surgery in 1997 that he really lost the consistent pace that he could generate.

 

[vic_orthdox]

No, no, sorry, was meaning that he doesn't and I'd bet nor did Gillespie at the same age.

Ian Healy, keeping to Jason Gillespie in the '97 Ashes Tour, said about one particular spell that it was the quickest he'd ever kept to. Not sure how old Gillespie was then, though.

 

[Salamuddin]

Ian Healy, keeping to Jason Gillespie in the '97 Ashes Tour, said about one particular spell that it was the quickest he'd ever kept to. Not sure how old Gillespie was then, though.

22

 

[Richard]

Srinath actually lost his pace much later in his career.

He was pretty quick from age 22-27.

28-33 - he wasn't as fast in this period.

It was after his shoulder surgery in 1997 that he really lost the consistent pace that he could generate.

Well he was still bowling at 93-94mph in WC99. Was almost certainly the 2nd-quickest bowler in the tournament after Shoaib Akhtar - bowled even quicker than Donald (who was still just about bowling 90mph at 33 years of age).

 

[Manee]

Yeah come to think of it you may have a point there...Pathan and Srinath also showed signs of slowing down pretty early in their careers. The general peak in terms of pace (well for bowlers like Lee, Shoaib, Bond anyway) is 26-29 or so...whereas those guys seem thus far to have hit their peaks in pace much earlier...Pathan had his at 20 and Khan his in about 2000 or 2001.

Irfan Pathan matured rather than 'slowed down' considering that he was never a right arm fast bowler but always a sharp medium pacer, but your point is valid.

 

[Manee]

Well he was still bowling at 93-94mph in WC99.

Really?! Interesting.

 

[Richard]

Yeah, and they reckoned his quickest game of all was the opening game against South Africa. Speedsters were only introduced in the Super Six stage.

 

[bond21]

McGrath was better than Walsh and Ambrose because he can land a ball hitting the top of off stump 99 times out of 100.

Either the batsman plays a stupid shot to score runs or he goes insane because its groundhog day every single ball.

Oh yea, he also bowled leg cutters and off cutters, mainly leg cutters and got edges all the time because of them.

And he only bowls at about 90% and saves his energy for the bouncer or yorker, which is faster

 

[iamdavid]

Irfan Pathan matured rather than 'slowed down' considering that he was never a right arm fast bowler but always a sharp medium pacer, but your point is valid.

Hmm there has been a noticeable drop in pace though, he's had the keeper up to the stumps frequently over the past year or so whereas that could not have happened when he emerged.
When I've seen him over the past year he's been in the mid 120's occasionally 130 (touching 135 or so at times in Adelaide and Perth). Whereas when he first emerged he was 135kph + and occasionally 140's....same sort of pace Sharma is now.

 

[Manee]

Hmm there has been a noticeable drop in pace though, he's had the keeper up to the stumps frequently over the past year or so whereas that could not have happened when he emerged.
When I've seen him over the past year he's been in the mid 120's occasionally 130 (touching 135 or so at times in Adelaide and Perth). Whereas when he first emerged he was 135kph + and occasionally 140's....same sort of pace Sharma is now.

The speed gun has been clocking the same sorta thing for Pathan around the year. He has hit 140kph a few times although he looks a lot slower. It baffles me how someone's bowling can 'cheat' the speed gun like that.

 

[Richard]

Hmm there has been a noticeable drop in pace though, he's had the keeper up to the stumps frequently over the past year or so whereas that could not have happened when he emerged.
When I've seen him over the past year he's been in the mid 120's occasionally 130 (touching 135 or so at times in Adelaide and Perth). Whereas when he first emerged he was 135kph + and occasionally 140's....same sort of pace Sharma is now.

I'm not sure about that, I don't remember him getting anywhere near 140kph in 2003\04. Certainly in the tour of England 6 months previously he was bowling at around the 80mph mark (round about 130kph) in the one televised India A game.

 

[Richard]

McGrath was better than Ambrose because he can land a ball hitting the top of off stump 99 times out of 100.

 

[Perm]

Ishant Sharma has barely played 4 matches and what exactly has he done apart from that small phase of play where he troubled Ponting? And everone seems to hail him as the next big thing.

He troubled the best batsmen in the world, not an easy thing to do when you consider that Ponting has primarily been the best batsmen in the world for the past few seasons. One of the best spells of seam bowling I've seen in a while, and unlucky that he didn't take more wickets throughout the recently concluded tour I thought.

Also, as far as I know nobody (except Steve Waugh, who beleives he is the next big thing in Indian cricket) is hailing him as anything other than a potentially very good bowler, which he could well develop into. The bloke made his FC debut at 18 and is now playing Test cricket at 19 years of age, which is pretty astonishing in itself. He's got fairly reasonable pace, can move the ball through the air and off the seam, looks to be accurate and appears as an intelligent bowler. Definitely has the tools to suceed at the highest level, but I'd like to see him bulk up just a little bit more, though I suspect that will come as his body develops naturally.

 

[Perm]

McGrath was better than Walsh and Ambrose because he can land a ball hitting the top of off stump 99 times out of 100.

Either the batsman plays a stupid shot to score runs or he goes insane because its groundhog day every single ball.

Oh yea, he also bowled leg cutters and off cutters, mainly leg cutters and got edges all the time because of them.

And he only bowls at about 90% and saves his energy for the bouncer or yorker, which is faster

Yeah, we were all trying to put down McGrath, shame on us.

 

[Tony]

...making sure that his hat size does not change

The Indian media, fans and ex-cricketers will do all they can to make him feel he is Larwood, Lillee and Lindwall combined. To make sure he realises that nothing could be further than the truth and that he is nothing but a youngster with promise who has tons of work to do and zillions of things to learn, is his big job.

Agreed - starting to do things like holding hands to his ears like when he got a wicket against aussies in Sydney - dont get ahead of yourself.....