For Sishu Griha Readers

Cricket Opinions warmly welcomes all its new readers from Sishu Griha Montessori and High School - those who have come here on reading the advertisement in the school's newsletter. We are sorry to inform you that due to the editor's coming board examination, blog updation will not be as often as expected or usual.-BS
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Cricket Opinions - 'The Right Place For The Right Opinions' is sorry to inform you that due to the short time remaining for the editor's 10th standard board examinations, the frequency of articles being published on your favourite blog will not be as much as you like. Another way to look at it is that you'll be hungry for more and keep coming back. The editor apologises but believes that he's got his priorities right - this time at least. Keep note - this does not mean there wont be any new articles, just that there wont be as many.

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India's Bowling Woes

So often we have seen the Indians put up a bulky total batting first – periodically thanks to a certain Tendulkar - and then also watch the bowling let all the prior effort down. There are a few ways to look at this problem

The flaw which stands out amongst others is sheer lack of consistency - the key aspect of bowling which the recently named Indian Test Captain Anil Kumble possesses and utilises to his great advantage. The bowlers all look good. Take R.P.Singh as the example; rhythmic run into the crease, one flow right from the top of his run up to the end of his follow through, nice shape on the ball and great use of the left arm over the wicket angle. Unfortunately for RP, in addition to all this technical correctness, there is this other factor which helps determine the true ability of a bowler from a more holistic point of view.

Cricket is tough – more so for bowlers. One who bowls five ‘peaches’ and gets hit for six of the last ball still has the rather unnoteworthy ordinary economy rate of 6.00. This is what happens to the Indian bowlers.

The Indian medium pacers have developed a typical over which goes something like this. Dot, beaten, beaten, one stolen run, (this is when the commentator says “It’s been a good over so far.”), on the pads, clipped for two and overcompensation from the bowler, wide and cut away for four. That’s seven runs off the over.

Even five mediocre deliveries which give away singles and one dot is better than this. The bowlers may argue that pressure has been put on the batsman with the ball passing the bat frequently. What use is putting the pressure on the batsman if a succeeding ball is there to be hit away?

This is something this Indian bowlers really have to work on.-BS

Advantage Southpaw

In a world dominated by right handers, the left handers possess some advantages in sports. Here’s a look at some advantages in cricket.

The left handed bowler has considerably more advantages than the left handed batsman. The main point is the angle. Everything is laterally inverted in the eyes of the batsman. Out swing for the left arm medium pacer is in swing for the right handed batsman. Out swing is executed easier by bowlers around the world and therefore is also played better than in swing well by batsmen as well. So that’s two in one – the left arm medium pacer can execute the simple out swing and have the right handed batsman handle the tougher in swingers.

Furthermore, in the case of pace bowlers, the angle left arm over the wicket is like a boon. The natural angle of a left arm over the wicket bowler to a right handed batsman is away from the latter. If the bowler then generates in swing to the right hander, the ball has the freedom to do quite a bit in the air to negate the angle. The bowler also therefore has so much to work with. He can have many balls go straight with the angle outside the off stump and strategically bowl one which moves into the unsuspecting batsman.

This is just the lesser of the two advantages of the left arm over the wicket angle. The other is the movement of the pitch. Picture this – a left arm seamer bowling left arm over the wicket with a steady rhythmic run, delivers the ball which goes straight with the angle away from the right hander, pitches on middle and off stump and seams back into the right handed batsman to trap him in front with the ball probably going on to hit off and middle.

That’s the delivery every left arm seamer dreams of. Ryan Sidebottom has done much of this on the Indian tour. Also, the bowlers gain great pleasure in setting up the batsman for the killer ball. Also, to have a batsman like Dravid at the receiving end with his technical flaw being exposed with his head leaning too far over the line of the ball….its all too good.

The left arm spinner has some great advantages as well; the first and foremost being that the orthodox bowler bowls off spin - which has to be handled like a leg spinner by a right hander.

Once again, in the case of left arm spinners, like in the case of seamers, the angle makes a whole lot of difference. The off spinner, either left handed or right handed, finds it much easier to get drift as against the leg spinner.

In the case of the left arm off spinner, this drift is coming into the right hander and then the ball turns away from him. This is more attacking than the ball spinning into the right hander. God always evens it out somewhere. The more attacking style of bowling, leg spin is more difficult to execute than off spin. This is where we left handers have a great advantage.

What about the left handed batsmen? It’s elementary. There are much more right handers on this planet than southpaws, and that makes it more difficult for the bowlers to adjust to them. Changing the lines all the time, playing around with the angle, etc are not easy jobs.-BS