High Literature from the Barmy Army Archives - Part 1

Throw, throw, throw the ball
Gently down the seam
Murali, Murali, Murali, Murali
Chucks it like a dream.

No Harmers done

With all the talk in the Ashes surrounding reverse swing and more recently the possibility of Trent Bridge being a 'Hoggard' pitch, very little is being said or written about Steve Harmison. A man who over the last couple of years has developed a reputation of being one of the most hostile quicks around has quietly slunk into the shadows. Not that he minds - Harmers is known to shun the limelight and go about his work quietly. With the groundsman promising a traditional fast bowler's wicket which won't get rough enough to take much spin, and on the flip side for England, probably won't scuff the ball up quickly enough to support reverse swing, Harmers might be the man hitting the headlines rather than Hoggard. That's my prediction for the fourth test: Harmison the bowling hero.

Demystifying reverse swing

Why is everyone talking about reverse swing these days as if it's a new discovery? Sure, the English bowlers have finally learned how to do it, but seriously, it's old hat by now. Wasim and Waqar were past masters at it and it was picked up by several other bowlers in the early nineties.

Bowlers with slingier more side on actions usually generate more reverse than the high-arm, hit-the-deck-hard bowlers like Harmison. A lot of cricket websites have come up with their explanations for the phenomenon, but I've found most of them either flawed or unsatisfactory. So here's my shot at it-

For traditional swing, one side of the cricket ball is kept polished and smooth while the other side is allowed to get rough through the course of play. Once there is enough of a difference in smoothness between the two sides of the ball (which happens almost as soon as the innings begins), it is ready to swing. For outswing to the right-hander, the ball is delivered with the rough side facing left and the seam vertical (or sometimes slighty tilted towards first or second slip). During the delivery, air travels faster over the smooth side of the ball and faces more resistance from the rough side. As a result, it gets pulled in the direction in which the rough side is facing - in this case away from the batsman. For inswing, the rough side faces right and the seam is either vertical or tilted slightly to the right, towards a possible leg slip.

Once the ball gets a little older - say about 35-40 overs old, the smooth side inevitably gets rougher and stops swinging in the conventional fashion. To counter this, bowlers make sure that the initial rough side is kept as dry as possible and the smooth side as moist as possible. The smooth side is now heavier than the rough side because of all the moisture and when the ball is delivered with the rough side facing left, like a traditional outswinger, the heavier weight of the smooth side pulls the ball in its directions, i.e. into the batsman. Hence the name 'reverse swing'. The same thing can be done to get reverse outswing with a traditional inswinger's grip.

What is interesting with this English team in the Ashes is that they've managed to start getting reverse swing from the 15th over and not the 40th over when most other bowlers get it to work. No one's too sure how that's happening, but one of the plausible theories is that a different make of cricket ball is being used here and that's behaving differenty from the usual kookaburra. Hopefully we'll have a more scientific explanation by the end of the series.

Did someone say football?

There was some tittering going on the other day about football season having begun. One such titter seemed to indicate that Sir Alex and his men had a pleasant outing against Everton despite Rooney and another said Chelsea didn't against Wigan (who?). Really.

The Premiership should be happy to consign itself to second fiddle for another month. Until then, I'll take high voltage Ashes action over watching an impotent Toon side struggle against the Wolves or whoever else managed to extricate themselves from the sub-basement last season, thanks very much.

Shaky Soothog hangs in there

How did England not win the game? The Aussies have their tail to thank yet again for an invaluably gritty rearguard after another laughable performance by the top order - with the exception of Ricky Ponting (Shaky Soothog in predictive text) of course.

I think Vaughan made a mistake in taking the new ball as soon as it was available. Simon Jones was getting noticeable reverse swing with the old one and Freddie - who is quite adept at reverse himself - was relatively fresh for another go. That probably was the decisive point of the game - with new batsman Warne just in, a bit of reverse might have got him. Instead, the new ball came on to the bat quite comfortably on the fifth day wicket and Warne hung on and killed a valuable ninety minutes.

What does this draw mean for the remainder of the series? Well, I think the Aussies will definitely take heart from this and use the ten day break to regroup and devise a better ploy against England. Dizzy will get his marching orders and Kasper or Tait will come in. I have a feeling this makes it advantage Australia, at least from a psychological point of view.

Well played, Ricky

The King of Spain...

All said and done, he really is a rubbish bowler, isn't he? Giles is the sort of bowler Ganguly used to thrive on in the late 90s. Gentle left arm offie with no variation coming over the wicket and pitching a foot or two outside off. Give me a break... I mean, even Boycott's mum could have hit him out of the attack. Which makes the Aussie discomfort against him all the more hilarious. Especially after they said they were going to make sure he was dropped before the fifth test.

I didn't realize how much fun it would be to see Australia being ground into the dust. There's still more than half the game to go and lots of time to turn things around, but it's really been great so far. There is no such thing as too much schandenfreude. It's hard to imagine what's possibly gone wrong with the team. The only guess I can hazard at this stage is that they wilt in the face of all out aggression from the opposition. India did it to an extent a couple of years ago down under when the batsman absolutely pulverized the Aussie bowling attack. For the first time, one could see just the merest hint of doubt creeping into Steve Waugh's face... but they held firm and drew the series. Now, against England's fierce bowling attack (with the exception of Hoggard who looks like he'd have trouble extracting movement out of a feather in a typhoon), the famed batting lineup is looking quite vulnerable. In all their years of world domination, I don't think the Aussies had faced a genuine pace attack and Harmison and Co. are providing them with just that. Here's to hoping more sadistic pleasures lie ahead in this series.

Ganguly's reinstatement

It was hard to know what to make of the headline on most cricket pages today of Ganguly's return to the helm (or to being under the cosh, if you will). Of late, I'm ashamed to admit, I've started sympathizing with him just a little - so here's something in his defence:

Not too many other Indian cricketers in this team, or indeed in past teams, have faced as much public pressure or scrutiny as Ganguly. His form from his heyday deserted him a few years ago and the only thing he had going in his favour was that he happened to be the captain of a team with three or four superstars in it who were capable of winning games singlehandedly. Yes, he was aggressive and probably the only guy in the team who stood up to pre-aussie-series mind games, but did that make him a worthy leader?

Actually, it probably did. Here was a guy taking most of the media attention away from the performing members of the team, so that they could go about and do their thing. A bit of a negative attitude to take towards captaincy, but what were the other options? Sachin proved to be too intense when he was captain and took every team defeat to heart, as a personal failing on his part. Dravid, the few times he's filled in Ganguly's boots during injury or suspension hasn't been particularly impressive. He comes across as a bit too mild (though, I have to admit, there were one or two promising signs of a tactical mind during the recent tri series in Lanka). Kumble only has a couple of years or less left, so no point trying him. Harbhajan and Sehwag don't seem to possess particularly sharp cricketing brains and everybody else is too inexperienced.

Maybe Dravid deserved more of a chance to build on this series... or maybe this is going to signal Ganguly's renaissance. I have a gut feeling it's the latter.

A self-referential, non-contextual opening.

This is a blog.

This is a blog entry.

This is a blog entry with a pompous title.