Swing when you're winning

How refreshing to see the ball swing like a banana at Trent Bridge. Exponents of that art like James Anderson, Sreesanth and Praveen Kumar certainly take the game to a different level as they continually probe away at the often bewildered batsmen.

Genuine swing bowling is a dying art. Bowlers over the years have fallen into the trap of swerving the ball rather than swinging it. Authentic swing is a far more challenging prospect to face than just shape, which is never excessive and often predictable.

The time that Australian Bob Massie made the cricketing world gasp on debut at Lord’s in 1972 has now been consigned to the highlights reel. To this day it is considered to be the purest exhibition of sustained swing bowling.

On that occasion he totally flummoxed England’s best, snaring 16 victims in that test with a remarkable demonstration of extreme swing. No-one had any answers to this mercurial performance. Such is the fragility and delicate nature of this skill that remarkably, some 12 months later, Bob was struggling to hold his place in his club team in Western Australia. This example perfectly illustrates the delicateness of perfecting this art for sustained periods of time.

We have been fortunate over the years to sit back and watch in awe as the likes of Imran Khan, Mike Procter, Wasim Akram, Malcolm Marshall and Kapil Dev ripped the heart out of quality batting line-ups. They were the best in the business of swing. They were superior practitioners who were devastating on their day. They regularly created havoc with teams as the batsmen rotated like a carousel when that swinging missile was boomeranging relentlessly at pace.

When the ball is moving prodigiously through the air, sometimes both ways, a whole new game is played out and judgment senses must be heightened to stay alive. Upon immediately arriving at the crease and facing such a probing assault an element of guesswork is a disturbing component when confronted with this excessive lateral movement. At all times a bowler strives to remove a batsman from his comfort zone and when conditions suit him a sense of vulnerability is presented.

When confronted by standard probing bowling the art of survival and occupation of the crease should be the only instinctive objective. Suddenly there are many variables to grasp. Among those are the adjustments required to contest the pace of the track, the speed of the bowler, the bounce of the wicket, the bowling length and not least of all, where the catchers are positioned. These are all typical initial considerations but all is ramped up dramatically when the ball is also swinging considerably.

In this situation the best have the ability to leave the ball as often as practical to buy time to acclimatise to the conditions. This enables an opportunity to hastily gather as much information as possible from the immediate surroundings to convert into a survival pattern.

When facing a swinging ball, the most prominent factors that must be calculated and acted upon in a short space of time include inspection of the seam position and its intended slant, where the shiny side of the ball is located, calculating the wrist position to indicate initial direction and whether the delivery point is from wide or close to the umpire.

Once all of that is ingested, only then will the batsmen be in a position to progress. It is of paramount importance that any inclination to savagely attack the bowling is ignored, but one must always be cognisant of the fact that rotation of the strike helps share the obvious uneasiness in the middle.

The mere fact that so many batsmen have already succumbed to this treasured and complex art in this test between England and India is an indication that techniques are deficient and so few are equipped to combat it once presented.

It is further proof that swing not swerve is a potent force.