The art of death bowling

By Harsha Amarasinghe

Bowling the last few overs of an innings in a limited overs match could be a nightmare for bowlers. Perhaps that’s a reason for those to be called ‘death overs.’

However, there were a few blokes such as Lasith Malinga and Waqar Younis who made batting in the death overs a nightmare for batsmen.

Yorkers were so central to their way of bowling that rather than scoring runs off them, batsmen were concerned about saving their toes. On YouTube, there are hundreds and thousands of videos of these bowlers smashing the stumps with those lethal toe-crushers.

There is a downside to this as well. Waqar Younis once claimed his economy rate was not so great because although he was confident of knocking the stumps over, yorkers were such a difficult delivery to execute, perhaps until the arrival of Lasith Malinga who did it on a regular basis for a longer period with great success as well.

The problem with yorkers is that there is very little margin for error. If you miss the length by a couple of inches you could be hammered.

Perhaps that is the reason why many teams have opted for different strategies in the modern game. One of the most frequent ploys has been bowling on and around the off-side wide crease. One could argue that the same method was executed brilliantly by Lasith Malinga and Nuwan Kulasekara in that famous T20 World Cup victory in 2014, but the fact is that this has been used so often at present.

Bowlers do not necessarily look to bowl wide yorkers as well. It seems like the length is out of the equation to a certain degree because most of the batsmen look to slog at the death overs and having to reach way outside the off stump reduces the chances of a solid connection and then there is the cricket book which favours the batting.

Lasith Malinga was one of the modern game's best exponents of the yorker 

As per the rules, if the batsman moves towards the off-side as the ball is delivered, and misses a ball bowled outside of the wide line, it shall not be called a wide. The exact phrase used in the ICC rules is, the ‘striker standing in normal guard position,’ so the moment you move you better make some connection.

Not knowing the rule or mainly forgetting it in the heat of the game, sometimes batsmen would shuffle across and leave a wide delivery hoping to get an extra only to be disappointed.

What are the chances of batsmen leaving a full swinging yorker on the middle stump? The art of death bowling perhaps has a new face.

KANDY U-TURN

What is hard to believe? Ben Gollings coaching Fiji to win another World Series title (Singapore) on Sunday (10) or that he was somehow part of the coaching staff of the Sri Lanka national rugby team that was hammered in the Asia Seven Series a few months ago?

SLR appointed one of the most decorated sevens coaches in October and understandably announced this with a big press conference, but even at that point things didn’t not look pretty because despite bringing in Gollings, they were forced to select a very average team thanks to the great support they had been getting from the Ministry of Sports which didn’t allow Kandy players to take part in the Asia Seven Series. Kandy are also equally at fault.

They are Sri Lanka’s best club team hands down. That is not a bias, that is a fact; twenty odd league titles, best players and ridiculous record - no one can argue that.

However, they didn’t send their players to a sevens tournament organized by Police which also happened to be a selection trial amid the request made by nearly a dozen of their first team members including Danush Dayan, Srinath Sooriyabandara and Tarinda Ratwatte.

Kandy stated at the time that they are a professional team and players require three months to prepare.

Flanker Shehan Pathirana who has been a phenomenal player for both Sri Lanka and Kandy announced his retirement in December, 2021.

Kandy was off to a fine start in the league in terms of wins, but it came at a cost, losing a number of forwards, and what does Kandy do next? Bring in Shehan Pathirana who had been retired for months. In two weeks, the former Royalist was back playing. Looks like Kandy took a huge U-turn on the ‘three-month’ policy.