While watching cricket, we have all heard pundits refer to “variations in the bowling”. We all understand what they mean when they say variants. But have you ever thought about how many different cricket bowling styles there are? Let’s investigate. Scroll down for A Complete Guide to Fast and Spin Bowling.
We all know that there are two different categories of bowlers: pacers and spinners. In terms of pacers, they may be further split into fast bowlers and swing bowlers, while in the spin bowling category, there are wrist spinners and finger spinners. Let’s now examine the various cricket delivery styles or bowling styles.
A Complete Guide for Fast and Spin Bowling
Fast Bowling
A fast bowler’s heart and soul used to be decent-length deliveries with nasty swings and bouncers. The West Indians’ quick bowling assault was well-known and even feared. The introduction of T20 Cricket, narrower boundaries, and thicker bats, however, forced speed bowlers to bolster their arsenals with several additional tools. Today’s fast bowlers need yorkers and slower balls more than ever. Let’s examine each cricket bowling style individually:
Bouncer
The bouncer is where you must begin. A bouncer is one of the most dangerous deliveries in cricket and is a term that is linked with fast bowling. A well-placed bouncer may do more than just shake the batsman by pitching the ball at a short length.
The laws governing bouncers have been modified several times because of their hazardous nature. In ODIs and T20s, a bowler is now permitted to throw two bouncers every over.
During the 1932–1933 Ashes, English bowlers notably employed this bowling motion to remove Sir Don Bradman from the game. The tragic passing of Phil Hughes increased worries about bouncers in modern cricket, although they still play a significant part in both tests and limited-overs cricket.
When you consider the top bowlers of bouncer deliveries, names like Malcolm Marshal, Andy Roberts, Shoaib Akhtar, Mitchell Johnson, and Brett Lee spring to mind.
Outswinger
For right-handed batsmen in test cricket, the ideal configuration. Any pace bowler’s ideal situation is a well-pitched ball of decent length near the fourth stump moving away from the right-hander with slip fielders watching for the tiniest edge.
Although outswingers make the batsman pursue the ball to obtain the edge, when driven skillfully, they are a visual pleasure. The ideal setup for out-swinging deliveries is a right-arm bowler to a right-handed batsman and a left-arm bowler to a southpaw owing to the angles they produce away from the batsman. In the contrary situations, a bowler finds it challenging to obtain the angle necessary to remove the ball from the batter.
Inswingers
The angle is already there as a left-arm bowler runs into a ball to a right-handed batter around the wicket. Boom! The bowler swings one in! The batsman is sure to see the timber everywhere if he or she chooses to turn around and gaze behind.
These deliveries are pitched on a solid length, just like outswingers, but are a little more challenging to master. With the angle he produces with his action, Indian bowlers Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, etc., are now among the best inswing bowlers.
Reverse Swing
The outswingers and inswingers that we have thus far observed are effective when the ball is brand-new. However, it is more challenging to swing the ball in any direction as the ball ages and loses its shine and form.
However, the ball typically begins to swing towards the shine around 35 to 40 overs, as opposed to the new ball, which tends to swing towards the rough side. Reverse swings are those when inswingers with fresh balls switch to outswingers and vice versa.
It is difficult for the batsman to recognize the reverse swing since it occurs later in the delivery and moves the ball more than a regular swing would. It is one of the most difficult abilities to learn, but, at the same time. Pakistan’s Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram are regarded as the best reverse swing bowlers in history. Zaheer Khan from India was a prodigy in the reverse swing.
Leg and Off Cutter
If bowled precisely, leg-cutters and off-cutters may be challenging to bat against. There is, however, very little room for error because these cricket delivery types are far slower than typical fast bowler’s deliveries.
Simply said, leg cutters are slower deliveries that are bowled with the fingers rolled to the leg side to produce the spin. Right-handed bowlers spin the ball towards the direction of the leg with their index fingers. Off-cutters are the opposite. These pitches resemble the leg break and off-break of a spinner but are delivered at a faster pace.
Yorker
Does this even require an introduction? We’ve seen a lot of Bumrah in previous games, and he can deliver Yorkers masterfully.
The hardest deliveries to perfect are yorker deliveries because there is no room for error. The batsman will be prepared to blast your full-toss delivery out of the park with just a small error. The Yorker, though, when delivered superbly, squeezes the batter for space and typically ends up damaging the stumps.
We believe that Shane Bond of New Zealand is one of the best bowlers of Yorker deliveries out there. He was simply unplayable with his ability to bowl banana Yorkers, sinking in the batsman.
Why is it referred to as a yorker?
The king of all bowls is thought to be a yorker. The ball lands squarely at the batter’s feet when this bowling motion is used, making it very challenging to hit. According to the Oxford dictionaries, the phrase first appeared when York players frequently bowled them.
Slower Ball
The advent of T20 cricket and the slower ball has added a new weapon to the fast bowler’s armory. Just a stock delivery bowled at a tempo that is far slower than a typical fast bowler’s. The batsman gets tricked by these deliveries, and most of the time they play the ball too early and miss it or smash it too high for an easy catch.
The back of the hand or in the shape of a knuckleball is typically used to bowl slower balls. The knuckleball, which was adopted from baseball, is when the bowler strikes the ball with his or her knuckles rather than fingers. But from the batsman’s perspective, the slower delivery ultimately turns out to be a conventional one.
Spin Bowling Types
Leg Break and Off Break
Do you recall Shane Warne’s Century Ball? The ball spun and knocked down Mike Gatting’s off stump after the Australian bowler delivered from over the wicket and placed the ball just outside the leg stump. Even though this happened in 1993, it still clearly shows what a leg break is.
Off break is the ball that is delivered outside of the off stump and spins to the leg side before hitting the right-handed batsman. It is the exact opposite of the leg break.
What distinguishes a leg break from a leg spin?
When the cricket ball bounces on the pitch during a leg spinner’s typical delivery, the ball spins (from the bowler’s perspective) from right to left. Leg breaks occur when the ball is away from the batter’s leg side for a right-handed hitter.
Googly (Leg Spinner)
Googly, as the name implies, is the leg spinner’s spin in the “wrong” way. The Googly spins from off the leg, traveling into the right-handed batsman, in contrast to typical leg-break deliveries. For the googly, as opposed to an off-break delivery, the bowler utilizes his or her wrist to produce a quick turn.
Doosra (Off Spin Bowling)
What Googly is to the leg spinner, Doosra is to the off-spinner. In contrast to an off-spinner’s stock delivery, the ball spins from the leg side to off in these sorts of deliveries. Considering the long history of spin bowling, this delivery is relatively new to the world of cricket, but players like Muttiah Muralitharan and Harbhajan Singh have made it quite well-known.
Top Spinner (Leg and Spin Bowling)
A top spinner is what we refer to as a loopy ball since it is bowed by both the leg and off-spinner. This bowler bowls the ball by releasing it over the top of his fingers, dropping it just short of the pitch. The ball bounces higher and falls a little bit quicker than the batter may anticipate because of the topspin produced.
Carrom Ball (Off Spin Bowling)
Recall how India was victimized by Ajantha Mendis of Sri Lanka in 2008. No one was able to read his carom balls, therefore his off-spin bowling took 6-13 against the formidable Indian batting order.
Carrom ball is more about how you grip the ball than anything else. In contrast to standard deliveries, the ball is released by flicking the fingers, much like a carom player does with the striker. The ball is held between the thumb, index, and middle finger. The way the ball is handled affects the spin it produces. The ball will spin from off to leg and vice versa if the middle finger is pointing in the offside direction.
Why is it known as a carrom ball?
It is known as a carrom ball because when the bowler flickers the ball, it is comparable to how a player flickers a coin on a carrom board.
Slider (Leg Spinner)
A slider is bowled with the bowler’s fingers rolling down the back of the ball, blending side spin with backspin—exactly the opposite of topspin. A slider is also delivered with a little broader pitch and less bounce than a topspin.
Arm Ball (Off Spin Bowling)
The off-spin ner’s version of the slider is known as the arm ball, in which the bowler chooses to bowl straight rather than spinning the ball either way. At the moment, Ravindra Jadeja is one of the well-known figures who frequently uses an arm ball.
