Cricket for Birds
This week, we’re going to talk about swing. But no, we’re not moving on to monkeys swaying from tree to tree, or Frank Sinatra for that matter. This kind of swing is more like a hawk soaring across the sky. Swing is one of the most important weapons in the arsenal of a fast bowler. By shining the ball on one side, and carefully positioning the seam which runs around the ball, bowlers can make it curve through the air as it approaches the batsman.
They can look to swing the ball away from the batsman, looking for an outside edge, or move it back into him and attack his stumps. Imagine being the batsman here. The ball is coming at you very quickly, and just to make things harder, it is moving through the air as it travels. Swing is easily explained by science. The shiny side of the cricket ball travels through the air faster than the rough one, and so the ball moves one way through the air.
However straightforward it is to explain it, this is not to say that it is easy to do. Swing bowling takes a lot of practice, but it also requires the right conditions, and a reasonably shiny cricket ball. It’s no use trying to bowl swing on a baking hot day in the Caribbean after Brian Charles Lara has pummeled the ball into the texture of a cabbage. Swing works best in cloudy, humid conditions, and especially in England.
There is no better exponent of the art of swing bowling than England’s Matthew Hoggard. When the sky is grey, and he has a shiny new ball in his hand, the Yorkshire man is a formidable bowler, moving the ball all over the place. Reverse swing is one of cricket’s great mysteries. No-one understands quite why it happens, or how it works. But for the select few bowlers who have mastered this art, it is one of the most dangerous weapons available to them in the game.
Reverse swing is different to conventional swing in two ways. It requires an old, rough ball, and the ball goes the opposite way. Imagine being the batsman now. You’ve worked hard to see off the new ball. And now the ball is still swinging, but in the wrong direction. How are you supposed to deal with that? Reverse swing was developed on dry, Asian pitches by such cricketing luminaries as Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.
Now, however, England have mastered the art, with Simon Jones and Andrew Flintoff able to reverse swing an old ball both ways. Anyone who watched the Ashes cannot fail to remember Simon Katich leaving a ball from Freddie that swung back to hit his stumps, or Jones inflicting the same fate on Michael Clark.
they won’t be telling anyone else how it works!
18th May 2006