Swing is king at the World Cup

India skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni was, perhaps, the first to realise that it would be swing, rather than pace or even spin, that would play a decisive role on subcontinental pitches during the World Cup. He had made this clear even before the tournament started. And following the first match, he again emphasised that matches would be won and lost on the success of reverse-swing bowling.

“In this World Cup tournament, reverse swing will come into action and fast bowlers who can bend it will contribute in powerplay and slog overs. If the opposition does not have wickets in hand and the fast bowlers can utilise the conditions when the ball gets old, then it can be tricky,” he had pointed out. And going into the final, Dhoni has not only walked the talk, but has also been spectacularly proved right.

Those who swung the ball, like India’s Zaheer Khan (19 wickets from eight matches) or New Zealand’s Tim Southee (18 wickets from eight matches) have been more successful than tearaway fast bowlers like Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar (three wickets from three matches at 40 runs per wicket) or Shaun Tait (11 wickets from seven matches) or Morne Morkel (nine wickets from six matches) or Brett Lee (13 wickets from seven matches). Even Dale Steyn, including his five-wicket haul against India, has just 12 wickets to show from six matches.

The swing vs pace poser at this World Cup was once again brought into sharp focus during the India-Pakistan semifinal at Mohali. The Indians opted to play three medium-pacers (all bowling way below 140 kmph as accepted at the post-match talk by Dhoni). Of these, Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra were left-arm bowlers. This selection, too, proved to be a masterstroke against a Pakistan line-up of right-handed batsmen. The left-arm pacemen, Nehra, in particular, kept angling the ball away from the right-handers to splendidly fox the batsmen. Nehra, and Munaf Patel, also did not bowl at a pace which would have enabled the batsmen to whack the ball on this slow and low pitch.

In contrast, the pacy Umar Gul, who often bowled around the 150 kmph mark, came on nicely to the bat and was gleefully hammered into submission by Virender Sehwag.

Indeed, the bowling trend at this World Cup inspires a rethink on the impact of swing bowlers on our pitches. Not long ago, the hunt, even in India, was for tall, well-built fast bowlers who could hurl the ball at speeds in excess of 145 kmph. The thinking was that if they hit their stride and found the right rhythm, they could be a threat to most batsmen, particularly the lower order ones. It was felt that they could coax pace and bounce from even the most docile of tracks and be a terror to any batting line-up.

And to add muscle to the argument, explosive pacers like Akhtar, Lee and Steyn from time to time proved that they could trigger a collapse on any pitch. However, these spells were few and far in between.

Akhtar, in fact, was an embarrassment for the Pakistanis. He terrorised the Kenyan batsmen to inaction in the first match. But he was pedestrian against Sri Lanka. His worst performance, though, came against New Zealand, where Ross Taylor clobbered him at will. Akhtar gave away 77 runs in nine overs and was not picked again.

Before the semifinal, there was a school of thought in the Pakistani camp, which believed that if Akhtar went flat out and picked up a couple of early wickets, his second or third spells (when he has looked jaded and out of breath) would not matter all that much. But seeing the pasting Gul received at the hands of Sehwag, it was probably prudent that Akhtar was kept away.

It may be recalled that before the start of the tournament, Dhoni had opted for another street-smart swing bowler, Praveen Kumar. When an elbow injury ruled him out, the selectors called upon a tested swing bowler, S Sreesanth, rather than the young and genuinely fast Ishant Sharma. Sharma’s torrid pace might have been a liability on these pitches, as Pakistan discovered with Akhtar.

Of course, swing bowling, whether the conventional sort or reverse, requires the bowler to pitch the ball right up to the batsman. This is to ensure that the ball stays just long enough in the air to facilitate swing. But if it is not in the right area, in terms of length and width, it could be blasted to the fence. Munaf found this out rather painfully. Although he had a haul of four for 48 in the opening game against Bangladesh, and a reasonably good outing against England on a batting-friendly track in Bangalore, he looked out of sorts until he regained form at Mohali.

Another fact that has emerged in this tournament is that the shorter format of the game has ruined batting techniques and this has consequently led to the resurgence of swing bowling. Batsmen without nimble footwork cannot neutralise swing — reverse or conventional. They have to counter angles, sudden movement and even direction and not all batsmen have been up to it.

Against pace bowling, the battles are more psychological. Once that is tackled (with modern protective equipment, for example), then, at this level, and on these slow and sluggish pitches, it is only a matter of forcefully putting bat to ball. Certainly India’s swing bowlers, Zaheer Khan in particular, have forced a rethink on the importance of swing bowling in limited-overs cricket. Until batsmen rework their technique to counter it, swing bowling — both conventional and reverse — is here to stay.