In the heyday of fearsome Caribbean pace packs, Andy Roberts, the patron saint of fast bowlers, was asked if he would ever resort to a slower ball. He replied, in a condescending tone, the story goes: “The quicker one is the bouncer that hit him on the helmet because he played it too late; the slower one is the bouncer that struck him on the helmet because he played too early.” None of his compatriots or the fast bowling fraternity elsewhere, like Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson, felt the need to reduce pace to deceive batsmen.
Times have changed. The slower ball is as powerful a weapon, across formats, as the toe-crusher or rib-tickler. Even more so in T20s, where not possessing a lethal slower ball is akin to a doctor without a super-specialization degree these days. Even the quickest and deadliest have it. Jasprit Bumrah and Pat Cummins; Shaheen Shah Afridi and Kagiso Rabada. Those that haven’t fine-tuned one find themselves swept aside in this format, even if they own several other gifts. As is the plight of Mitchell Starc, the most expensive fetch in IPL.
Starc is an irresistible concoction of gifts–the in-swinging yorker, the head-winking bouncer, the untameable hard length balls, pace and control, strength and stamina; in short everything a fast bowler would crave for, enough to coax ₹24.75 crore from KKR’s pockets–except that he doesn’t possess a high-definition slower ball.
One Dimensional
It has not been the sole woe behind his damning returns—he has traded 58 runs for a wicket in the power-play overs. In the last four overs, where he has been restricted to only one-over spells, he has shipped in 16.8 runs a game, he has conceded 44 fours, the most by any bowler this season. But it has compounded his struggles, rendering him one-dimensional, neutering his death-over prowess.
In the past, he has been somewhat dismissive of slower balls and its sub-genres. “I’m not someone who comes out with 24 different types of slow balls, certainly for T20 cricket. I’ve got a bit of speed on my side and focus on obviously my death bowling rather than doing a lot of things okay,” he had once said.
The problem is not that he doesn’t have several iterations of a slower ball; but he has not mastered the one he has. You don’t need a bagful of slower balls to instigate fear. A sole well-disguised slower ball would suffice. Jasprit Bumrah is the perfect antithesis. He predominantly uses just one slower-ball type. The one he delivers like an off-cutter. But one alone matters, if he could disguise it as masterfully as Bumrah does. The action, release, arm-speed, everything is the same as any of his other balls. It could be dipping beauty or a slow-bouncing beast. Forget the varied effects of the same slower ball Bumrah could produce, Starc’s only slower ball—a left-arm seamer’s leg-cutter—is still a work in progress, rather stuck in 2015, his last IPL season before this.
For batsmen, it is far from indecipherable. In a show for A Sports, Waqar Younis notes: “Watching his action itself, you realise he is going to bowl a slower ball.” He hands over the microphone to Wasim Akram, an exemplary and judicious exponent of slower ball himself. Akram dissects: “You see Shaheen Afridi, he also bowls a similar one, with the grip of a leg-cutter. But he disguises it. Only in the load-up does he show the seam position to the batsmen. But Starc’s grip can be detected even from his run-up.” If you watch closely, the arm speed is slightly slower, the leap is not as pronounced as when he bowls at full pelt. These are simple clues for video-fed batsmen. They could second-guess him without much ado.
Another panelist Misbah-ul-Haq chimes in with another observation and demonstrates with an imaginary action: “He looks to float the ball and not hit the pitch.” So essentially batsmen decode the change of pace from his hands itself and not in the air or the surface. Even a merry-go-round lower-order bat as Karn Sharma could chance his bat and smear him for three sixes. The batsman knows he would rarely change his pace; even if he does, he throws clues.
The conditions exacerbate this imperfection. He could get away without a slower-ball on bouncier surfaces in Australia, where probing hard length at pace with protection on the off-side and large boundaries, could preserve his dread. Or when there is some swing with the new ball and he could win the game in the powerplay itself. But none of these have manifested in the IPL. “Because he doesn’t have a good slower ball, he doesn’t have a plan B, when the yorkers and bouncers don’t work,” says Akram.
Perhaps, Starc himself knows he doesn’t have a killer slower ball. Hence, he uses them sparsely. So far, he has bowled only five. Five rather good ones, where batsmen could manage only a run and leg-bye. The reluctance perhaps stems from the knowledge that he has not quite mastered the ball, as proficiently as his yorker or nip-backer. Perhaps, as the tournament rolls along, you could see him sprinkle it more generously.
But it robs him off another dimension. Until then, he would be predictable to deal with, especially at the death. It’s humanly impossible to bowl the perfect yorker every ball. Besides, good adventurous batsmen scoop and steer even toe-crushers to the fence. He can’t be bowling length, hard length or bouncers all the time. Batsmen would merrily second-guess him. Perhaps, the code to ending his IPL struggles to polish his slower ball, one that the patron saints of fast bowlers speak in a condescending tone, but one that’s indispensable in franchise cricket.
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