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