*Reverse-swing has evolved into mainstream ploy
Derek Pringle - 29 July 2002
In the right hands the power of swing is a mighty force and England’s second-string bowling attack have so far harnessed it well. But the swing achieved by them against India at Lord’s on Saturday was of the reverse variety and very different from the sort described in the MCC coaching manual.
Reverse-swing, as opposed to the conventional type, has probably been around for decades, though its deliberate use only really arose after Sarfraz Nawaz, a fine fast-medium opening bowler for Pakistan during the 1970s and 1980s, was persuaded to reveal his secrets to the rest of the team by captain Imran Khan.
A colourful character, Sarfraz discovered that by soaking the ball on one side with spit or sweat, while allowing the other to roughen and remain dry, he could get the ball to move laterally in the air. For reasons few can explain, even now, making the ball leave the right-hander is far more difficult than getting the ball to come in.
For a while Sarfraz became known as the ‘Doctor of swing’, though when England batsman Allan Lamb suggested the sobriquet was more applicable as a verb than a noun, and that his former colleague at Northamptonshire had taught a whole generation of bowlers to ball tamper, a lengthy court case ensued.
On the bare, parched pitches of Pakistan, where the shine lasts about six overs, Sarfraz’s discovery was a revelation and it gave him new powers in situations traditionally dominated by batsmen. In years to come anthropologists will see it as a classic case of man overcoming a harsh environment, a stroke of genius that continues to baffle experts.
But this was a prototype and once spread about the team it was honed to something approaching perfection by the early 1990s, not always by legal means. Bottle-tops, cheese graters, fingernails have all apparently been used to abrade the ball on one side, though not soil, something Michael Atherton was accused of against South Africa at Lord’s in 1994.
England knew the theory surrounding reverse-swing, but lacked the subtleties required in preparing the ball. Atherton’s use of soil from his pocket, although provocative when seen on TV by a media hungry for scandal, was purely restorative as he tried to mop up the excess dribble (entirely legal) that Darren Gough, in his enthusiasm, had allowed to creep on to the dry side of the ball.
According to most scientists, who have conducted wind tunnel tests during the last 50 years, conventional swing arises mainly as a result of the angle of the seam. Polishing one side of the ball, although fixed in the folklore of the game as a reason for swing, may aid the process but during my career I could swing the brand new ball, equally shiny on both sides, far more than one where the shine had been developed on one side.
As air passes round the ball on its way to the batsman, the seam trips the boundary layer to create turbulence, which in turn creates an imbalance of energy and therefore drag on one side of the ball. Unlike reverse-swing, it requires precision technique, as to position the seam at the right cant, the ball has to be turned into a gyroscope. The wrist action, which has to ensure an upright seam as well as make the ball backwards rotate like a yo-yo does when it descends, is complicated, which is why so few bowlers manage to achieve it on a daily basis.
The seam does not hold the same prominence for reverse-swing as the ball requires a certain amount of wear and tear, at least to one side. Instead, turbulence is caused by the rough side acting like the dimples on a golf ball, without which even Tiger Woods would struggle to hit it 200 yards.
The ideal, around which Pakistan used to base their game-plan in the early 1990s, was to end up with the ball smooth and clammy from sweat on one side, while scrupulously dry and pitted on the other. At least that is how the ball looked after Wasim Akram had bowled me with the best ball I had received in any form of cricket at the Oval in 1992.
Bowling left-arm over the wicket, Wasim set the ball off at least six inches outside leg-stump before, with about 15 feet left to travel, it swung late towards the off-stump which it flattened. With the ball travelling in excess of 90mph, movement that late cannot be adjusted to without guesswork and by trying to clip the ball through the on-side I had guessed wrong.
Wasim, along with Waqar Younis, were masters of reverse-swing and England’s innings that day bore the scars of it. Sauntering along nicely at 182 for three, we were bowled out for 207 as the ball suddenly started hooping round corners. Atherton and Alec Stewart, both of them with over a 100 caps each for England, reckon no pair has bowled better to them than Wasim and Waqar during that period and they have faced some of the best fast bowlers in the game’s history.
As ways of achieving Irish swing - as the Aussies refer to it - have spread, most teams have one or two bowlers who can achieve it. None though has approached the levels of destruction achieved by Wasim and Waqar. Once they started bending it, usually after about 30 overs, scorecards suddenly turned binary with batsmen, especially those just coming in, virtually powerless to resist.
In England’s present line-up, Craig White is the best exponent, followed by Simon Jones and Andrew Flintoff, with Matthew Hoggard a conventional swinger. With the weather hot and the pitch dry, the reversers should hold sway, though where the fickle art of swing is involved, nothing should be taken for granted.*