There is a cliche much used in old Westerns. “It’s quiet,” one cowboy, crouched behind a rock, will say to another, “too darned quiet. I don’t like it.” At times, this must be like playing against the Pakistan cricket team.
This last weekend, I watched the Sussex openers Luke Wells and Harry Finch put on 212 for the first wicket against what will probably be two-thirds of the Pakistan pace attack for the first Test this week. Scarcely a ball had beaten the bat, runs came at a merry rate. Sussex were thriving but Pakistan were quiet, too darned quiet. Suddenly Wahab Riaz cranked it up a notch or two, the ball began to move where there had been scant evidence previously, and in the space of 18 deliveries, four wickets had tumbled. It is what Pakistan can do.
Twenty years ago this month, I was watching from the top deck of the Lord’s pavilion as England were attempting to chase more than 400 to beat Pakistan. They hadn’t made a bad start either, with Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart adding 154 for the second wicket to take the score to 168 for one. Too darned quiet. Mushtaq Ahmed removed both in rapid succession and before you could say Waz’n’Waqar, the board read 186 for eight and the game was up.
In the course of this procession one moment sticks in the mind, of Graeme Hick, standing at the Nursery end, waiting for Waqar Younis to steam in from the pavilion. In that split second, there was utter clarity as to what was about to happen, and here is the thing: Waqar knew it, and so too did Hick. Moreover Waqar knew Hick knew he knew and there would be nothing he could do about it. Seconds later, the yorker, delivered at well over 90mph, had darted in wickedly late at his feet and detonated Hick’s leg stump from the turf. If ever anything in cricket could be said to be inevitable, then this was it.
Reverse swing. It is a Pakistan phenomenon, an art that helped them make a virtue out inhospitable bowling conditions. “If God gives you lemons, make lemonade,” says Forrest Gump. Pakistan were given flat, grassless but abrasive pitches, anathema to pace men so it was thought. But they learned how to make use of the way in which the ball would cut up and the aerodynamics that could be created. If, in the past, the techniques of ball-preparation have been artificially enhanced at times (and don’t kid yourselves that all sides haven’t resorted to this), then the fact remains the use of reverse swing is the result of incredible ingenuity. There is still more to it than simply the condition of the ball.
Who was the first to discover reverse swing? Or more pertinently, who was the first to recognise it for what it really was, understand it, and then harness it? My first memory of seeing it was one afternoon at Lord’s when Middlesex were playing a county match against Northamptonshire and suddenly Sarfraz Nawaz, the Galloping Major with the heavy heaving action, began to whack the ball into the thigh of Mike Brearley. We heard about how Imran Khan could suddenly make the old ball swing dramatically, and thought he must have been lifting the quarter seam in some way to act as a sort of air brake. No matter how hard we tried in the nets, it never worked.
If only I had had the gumption to realise that for some years there were times when I had been reversing the ball. In a game in Hyderabad in India, I recall the ball hooping in to the batsman no matter how hard I tried to make it go away, as generally happened. This I put down to the ball somehow having a bias, the cork centre knocked out of skew perhaps. We called it a back-to-front ball. Then there were the occasions, late in a day, when the old ball instead of producing away swing would continually shape in to the right-hander. I’m tired, I would rationalise, my action is collapsing. So instead of recognising, embracing and utilising reverse swing, I actually fought it. If only.
And now it is a mainstream technique. Umpires are extremely vigilant these days and swift to recognise any unnatural action on the ball (one official of my acquaintance tends to deal quietly by checking the shape of a suspect ball using the rings for the smaller women’s cricket ball, and thus having an excuse for changing it ) but ball-preparation is meticulous. Spinners may bowl (Mushtaq was an important factor for Wasim and Waqar), pacemen bowl cross-seam to scuff it, fielders throw it in on the bounce, trying to utilise old pitches or bare patches. One side is smooth and polished, the other ragged. The ball has to be bone-dry so it will not be passed through sweaty hands.
If there is no orthodox swing, the decision to try for reverse comes early. In the warm-up match before the first Test in Ahmedabad on their last India tour, England experimented using the new ball and got it reversing inside nine overs. It may be trickier at Lord’s, for although the placid nature of the pitch might demand this sort of help for the bowlers, the outfield is habitually lush, exacerbated by the damp summer.
Yet Pakistan will find a way. They do not panic, biding their time. Yasir Shah will bowl his wrist-spin and the ball will gradually come to heel. And then Wahab and Mohammad Amir will turn on the heat. It will make wonderful watching.
