11/08/2009

The Impatient Cricketer

Among the hysterical articles on The Ashes series, Patrick Smith’s article in The Australian ‘Understanding the simple art of cricket’ is a rare gem.
In it he contends, cricket or any game for the matter has remained unchanged from its inception. Only the terminologies and the technologies surrounding it have changed. 
Beyond this, the article makes a valid point on the present day bowlers. 
According to Patrick Smith, a bowler should first build up pressure by bowling in the ‘good areas’ and then only bowl a wicket taking ball. 
Patrick Smith contends that by striving to bowl ‘wicket taking ball’, the bowler’s experiments too much and bowl loose balls. 
This releases the pressure and gives an opportunity for the batsmen to score runs freely. In addition, this will put the pressure back on the bowler. 
There is one other danger from experimenting too much that Patrick Smith omitted to say. 
By experimenting too much bowlers lose their inborn wicket taking ability. A good example is Mitchell Johnson. 
Too much experimentation is the root cause of Mitchell Johnson’s current travails. 
Sadly, Mitchell Johnson’s experiments have meant that he lost the very ability to bowl his wicket taking ball (the ball that angles away from a right handed batsmen) and hence failed to take wickets. 
This writer believes that too much experimentation indicates that modern day cricketers have lost the fine art of playing the waiting game. They are too impatient and feel the pressure if they fail to make an immediate impact. 
To the reader, are we seeing too much ‘impatience’ in the game of cricket?


Image courtesy snapshot19

2 comments:

straight point said...

another example that can be given is irfan pathan who paid the price of too much coaching that he eventually lost his way...

Viswanathan said...

I was thinking of him too when I wrote this article.