Another fascinating webinar in Stuart McErlain-Naylor’s Science of Cricket series on YouTube — Oliver Runswick on anticipation and perceptual motor skill in cricket.
For me, two things stood out from Oliver’s presentation:
Fascinating article from Cameron Ponsonby for espncricinfo.com, on why some quick bowlers are perceived by the batters to be “quicker than they look”.
Cameron’s article starts to unpack the phenomenon of the “heavy ball”, and why some bowlers manage to hustle the batters more than another bowler who looks to be bowling quicker.
But I think there are several clues for the inquisitive bowler or bowling coach looking to develop pace and variations.
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He takes full advantage of the fact that a left-hand bowler, bowling round the wicket, can deliver the ball so that its flight in the air begins well outside the line between wicket and wicket and comes in towards the batsman, and then the ball, after pitching…goes across the wicket from off to leg.
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[He also has] a faster ball which he delivers with his arm a little lower than usual, and which comes across quickly from the off and is inclined to keep rather low.
No, not a description of Imad Wasim, but of J.H. King of Leicestershire, taken from Beldam & Fry’s Great Bowlers and Fielders: Their Methods at a Glance, published in 1906.
But the similarities with Karthik Krishnaswamy’s analysis of Imad’s strategies bowling for Pakistan in the 2021 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup are striking.
The Teesra 