KS Muralidharan
With IPL scores crossing 250-plus regularly and threatening to breach 300 soon, cricket has become almost exclusively a batsman’s game, where a bowler is there only to get slaughtered. According to cricketing grapevine, a rebellion by the bowlers is imminent.
Since a dot ball is becoming as rare as getting out lbw for a bouncer, the following innovations may be considered to save the bowlers from routinely getting murdered, and make IPL a more even contest between bat and ball.
Encourage the bowlers to fool the batsman by say, yelling or making some funny noise, and that too a little early before their actual delivery. They have to practice some six different types of yelling and mix it up when they bowl. Or make some unexpected monkey faces at the batter, at the time of delivery. Or fake the actual delivery before the actual delivery! After all, there’s no rule which defines the time for the final toss of the ball from the hand!
Another innovation the bowlers can explore is to bowl the ball so slow that it simply does not pitch and only rolls over towards the batter literally at a snail’s pace. The technique here is to ensure the ball does not STOP before reaching the batsman as otherwise it will not be considered as a legal delivery.
Such a delivery will rule out an aerial shot. It’s impossible to hit a ball up, when it is just about mobile and kissing the ground. You can’t hit it at least until the next innovation comes in the next IPL.
Youngsters who first started to play cricket when they were 2 years old will be familiar with this kind of delivery. Why? Simply because they didn’t have the strength to hurl a ball for a distance of 22 yards.
But now it can be mighty useful. You can call this as going back to the basics. To the extremely basic.
Here are a few other tricks for the beleaguered bowlers:
Keep rotating your arm at the time of delivery, so that the batter does not know when you are going to deliver the ball! This innovation is inspired by Lagaan, and therefore, it has been tried and tested!
Bowl underarm and ensure the ball does not rise at all from the ground. Underarm bowling is not illegal, at least not yet.
Give up the rhythm in your bowling to distract the batter and make him think! Change your rhythm every single delivery. Run fast, then slow, then run fast or slow, or zig-zag. Mix up your delivery so that the batter doesn’t know what to expect. You can even walk up in your run up and then suddenly speed up your stride.
It’s not really tough. Actually bowling to a rhythm is tougher as it needs discipline! Here you are bowling in a totally carefree manner and even you do not know what you are going to bowl!
Be a genuine all-rounder as a bowler. When you are brought in as an off-spinner, bowl medium pace! If you are asked to open the bowling as a fast bowler, bowl leg spin! If you are neither, just bowl whatever comes to mind!
The main idea is to just bowl, for want of better word, a whatever-ball! Because this IPL has proved that it makes no difference to the batter what kind of a bowler you are and what you are bowling.
For the batter, the only thing that matters is to hit the ball for a boundary. All he wants is for the ball to come towards him. What you bowl — off-spin, leg-spin, in-swing, out-swing, yorker, etc. — is for the telecast, commentators and the audience.
So the bowler too must adopt the same approach. The only thing that should matter for the bowler is that the ball should just sort of gently roll towards the batter — kissing the ground and politely approaching the batsman. Such a delivery, scientifically speaking just cannot be aerially hit for a boundary.
Of course, there will be a massive hue and cry — and it might even go on to become an electoral issue. Is Modi behind it? Or is it the hand of the INDI Alliance? Is it a hidden attempt to change the Constitution of cricket? A global conspiracy perhaps to defame India through cricket? Is IPL being manipulated to end up as a wealth redistribution idea, inspired by Rahul Gandhi?
Let the experts and fans alike protest loudly that it is not cricket. But IPL, far from cricket, is actually a billion dollar tamasha.
And who knows, this kind of whatever-bowlers and whatever-bowling too will become a new innovation that will be embraced soon and maybe, even this surface-level ball, defying gravity, will be scooped for a six. Why not? If a batter can show his back to the bowler and hit the ball for a six, anything is possible in IPL.
Then what? Pick a cue from Blind Cricket, where the ball is filled with ball bearings with audible clues. Use a similar ball where the audible cues can be mixed up to include many jingles with volume control which can distract the batter!
This is in all probability the only way to make IPL an even contest between bat and ball.
In fact, we will see IPL become a bowler’s paradise and fans will quickly warm up to this new brand of cricket. After all, what the people want is to have some serious fun — with real cricket only being a side-show. Howzzat?