Anrich Nortje has been all about intimidating batters in the IPL over the last two years. When he steadies himself at the top of his run up, he seems like a man on a mission.
The speed gun is overworked when he runs into bowl. It’s been a while since the world of cricket saw a bowler who hits the 150 kmph mark as consistently as Nortje does.
As much as he has contributed to Delhi Capitals’ rise as an IPL powerhouse with his pace, Nortje is showing how hitting the old-school good length can still be of use in T20 cricket.
“I always follow the cliché, which is to try to hit the top of off (stump) somehow,” Nortje said on Friday. It’s something he works on with his fellow South African pacer Kagiso Rabada.
“We chat simple stuff, like getting on top of off-stump, cliches, just about finding how to do it,” Nortje said.
“I don’t think about bowling speeds on the field but I do think about it when I am doing my strength training. High speed is not something I search for on the field. I just try to hit the right lengths while bowling during a game.”
On Saturday afternoon in Abu Dhabi, his counterparts at Rajasthan Royals — Mustafizur Rahman, Chetan Sakariya and Kartik Tyagi — will offer a deluge of variations, a departure from Nortje’s ‘clichés’. And then there’s the talk about the pitches in UAE tiring out as the IPL progresses and the subsequent T20 World Cup draws closer.
Nortje’s first instinct is to take the pitch out of the equation.
“There’s a lot of talk about the pitches tiring out. I don’t know how it will play out at the end of the IPL. But it’s important to take the pitch out of the equation with the pace,” he said. Then came the rider. “While you take the pitch out of it but it also determines what you are going to bowl. It’s adapting every day as quickly as possible. You have to find the right line and length and judge if you have to bowl slower balls or yorkers,” Nortje said.
“So far in the UAE, it has been about bowling the hard length and being fuller at stages, while not being too short for the ball to sit up, and then find the right line to hit the stumps,” Nortje analysed.
Two contrasting seambowling attacks go head-tohead. It will be interesting see if the cliché keeps Capitals running or Royals’ canny attack can push them into the top four in the points table.
