THIS VS THAT
SPIN BOWLING
Listen, I’m not the most knowledgeable man about cricket, but from what I can gather spin bowling is the way to go. Shane Warne, Dan Vettori, Muttiah Muralitharan, all of them great New Zealanders. What do these men have in common? Putting. Revs. On. The. Rock. The lazy man’s option, spin bowling seeks to bamboozle the batsman into making a complete tool of himself at the crease.
Picture it, you’re a pace bowler, you’ve just sprinted full noise to the crease, all cylinders firing, you launch the ball down the pitch at a blistering pace. The ball is blocked for the 49th consecutive time, you have permanent back injuries as your disk slips.
Now cometh the spinner. He trots to the crease in a leisurely stroll, lobs the rock down pitch, it looks wide, the batsman leaves. Suddenly, it fucks off in the other direction as it hits the dirt. The wicket falls, you’re left questioning your life choices.
The spinner has so many tools at his disposal. So you’ve gotten used to the spin? Watch me turn in the other way and fuck your stumps up. Oh you’re playing defensively guarding your pads? Watch me find your outside edge and banish you to the shadow realm.
Too often it’s the spin bowlers are left out of the equation when it comes to praise on the cricket pitch, it’s a job that’s got to be done with few willing to roll up their sleeves and put in the work. Pace bowlers seem to get all the kudos, all the attention. Well no more.
Quick bowlers are the equivalent of backs in rugby. A little showboaty, a little prettier….. a little more cunty. They’re a real vodka cruiser in comparison to the spinner’s handle of Waikato.
It may not come with all the esteem of pace bowling, nor all the ladies. But it’s a grittier option and anyone who can turn a ball has my respect.
PACE BOWLING
Pace bowling. When you think cricket you think pace bowling. When you think pace bowling you think Brett Lee, Lasith Malinga, Shane Bond, Mitchell Johnson, the list goes on and on. These are the names of men who probably paved the way for your love of cricket as a young whippersnapper. The style of which these men bowl is envied by millions, flinging a red cherry out of their fingertips consistently at 150 clicks, striking fear into the unlucky man at the other end of the crease who had to don the pads and put themselves up against such a monster bowling attack.
Spin bowling is boring as fuck, the entire field comes close in, the balls rarely reach the 100 kph mark, which doesn’t spark fear inside the batsman’s brains and make them shit their undies. Pace bowling is far more entertaining than watching someone painfully lob a cherry 20 metres.
You see all sorts of shit with a good pace bowler bowling wheels; amazing one-handed catches in the slips, Neil Wagner bowling bouncers, smashed helmets or even broken toes from a batsman being caught out by a yorker right on his toes. They’ve also produced some of the best moments in the history of a game, remember when Shaun Tait bowled an over in a T20 against Pakistan with the slowest ball being 150? Fuck me! Just rewatching that on YouTube gives me the chills. Or when Peter Siddle took a hat-trick on his birthday, that is just ingrained into my memory from when I witnessed it live as a 10 year old. Truly epic stuff.
If you want to see a batter block balls all day, then spin bowlers are your type. On the other hand, there are pacebowlers that are sure to have you on the edge of your seat.
