They’ve been charging towards the wicket ever since overarm bowling was standardised in 1864. Well, not exactly charging. They amble. They shuffle. They waddle. They gather at the crease and unfurl dibbly-dobblers. The peaches they send down are not quite ripe. The jaffas they deliver are gluten free.
These are the unblessed athletes, bereft of twitching fibres and whiplash limbs. Still, they never shy away from the requisite hard graft, leaning once more into the breeze and up the hill with devoted zeal. They’re as rare as pangolins in Test cricket and are all but extinct in white-ball formats on the international circuit. They are the medium-paced seamers.
They used to be everywhere in the 1990s and 2000s, bowling heavy balls on probing lengths with ring fields. Their most fertile breeding ground was in New Zealand where Chris Harris, Nathan Astle, Stephen Fleming and Scott Styris led the way, but there were others. Hansie Cronje, Steve Waugh, Saurav Ganguly, Phil Simmons, Paul Collingwood, Andrew Symonds, Adam Hollioake; you could select a side comprising only those who wouldn’t get the new ball for your local club’s first XI and still have a decent shot at winning a World Cup.
Now they feel like an anachronism. According to CricViz no seamer who bowls below an average speed of 125km/h has taken more than 50 Test wickets over the past 10 years. The closest are Pakistan’s Mohammed Abbas, who clocks in at 126km/h, and Jason Holder and Vernon Philander, who each average 127km/h. But they don’t count.
All three are among the top four wicket-taking seamers in Tests for their countries over the past 20 years. Holder’s 6ft 7in is a weapon on its own and means he just has to land the ball on a spot to cause trouble at the other end of the pitch. Philander and Abbas are human metronomes, experts of the wobble ball with averages around 23 in Test cricket. These are the exceptions that prove the rule.
So, where did they all go, those sidling seamers? The short answer is that they were hunted out of existence. In their heyday, medium pacers had the luxury of bowling wicket-to-wicket lines, often with the wicketkeeper standing up, with a slew of fielders protecting the boundary. Batters were content to nudge and nurdle them around the park as they meandered through the middle overs of ODIs or the hour before a break in Tests.
Everything changed in 2005. The 50-over game saw the introduction of three powerplays which increased the number of overs with fielding restrictions. That same year the first T20 international was staged and a new generation of batters began to rethink the limitations of their forebears. They started to hit through the line and over the top with greater frequency. Thicker bats, harder decks and the use of two new balls made it easier to play lofted drives and pick-ups off the pads. Batters, once stationary, moved around their crease making it impossible to settle on line and length. The margin for error was atomised for any bowler who couldn’t crank up their speed or bewitch with an arsenal of spin options.
Then there were the cultural shifts. By this stage speed guns were regular fixtures at grounds and the shortcomings of some bowlers were laid bare. It was almost embarrassing to see your hero give it his all but barely nudge the dial past 110km/h. Batters, selectors, captains and the rest of us woke up to the realisation that these anthropomorphised bowling machines could simply be thwacked into orbit.
As they say in Pakistan – unsurprisingly the only Test nation without a standout trundler – “pace is pace”. It’s easy to understand how the potent mix of fear and awe has warped the discourse. Between now and England’s away Ashes at the end of the year we’ll hear how Ben Stokes’s attack lacks speed. We’ll wonder if Mark Wood and Jofra Archer can hold their bodies together for one final salvo. We’ll question if Ollie Robinson has the oomph to lead the assault, forgetting that Jimmy Anderson was England’s leading wicket taker the last time the side won in Australia.
Thankfully there’s a haven where the endangered medium-man can find joy. Acting as the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuary of the cricket world is the County Championship. Here a crimson Dukes, nibbling surfaces and fluffy cloud cover have helped preserve a dying art. Darren Stevens is the alpha of these betas, a legend who sent down 31,595 dobblers across 326 first-class matches over a 25-year career. And every time he did he weaved a thread connecting the elite game and the village green.
Of course Stevens and his ilk performed their craft to an impeccable standard, and it’s only wild fantasy that makes him remotely relatable. But apart from a tailender’s swipe across the line, all of us can cosplay at being a professional cricketer. We might not be able to cover drive like Joe Root, take flying catches like Glenn Phillips or bowl thunderbolts like Jasprit Bumrah. But we can all amble and shuffle and waddle towards the crease, gather our limbs and send down a dibbly-dobbler.
The day it all changed
Do you remember when you made the leap into adulthood? I do. It hit me in the chest like a bouncer from Shoaib Akhtar. It was April 7 2000. I was 12 years old, still coming to terms with South Africa’s exit from the World Cup the year before when my world fell apart.
In testimony that still leaves me cold it was revealed that Hansie Cronje, the captain of the Proteas, a man hand-picked by Nelson Mandela to be a beacon of hope for a new democracy, my hero, had taken money from Indian bookmakers in exchange for fixing matches. Not only had he sold his country out for a few thousand dollars, he tried to rope in impressionable young teammates as well.
Cronje said that it was an “unfortunate love of money” that compelled his actions. He wept on the stand as he faced the full force of the King Commission, copping a life ban from any involvement in the sport. I remember watching with my mother in disbelief as I came to terms with some harsh truths all at once.
This was the real world; ugly, broken, remorselessness. This showed me that good men were capable of terrible acts. That greed had the capacity to strangle patriotism. That even the selfless and the gifted could betray their values. It took me a while to get over it. Maybe, in some small way, I’m not quite there.
Cronje died a year later, on my birthday, June 1 2002, when the light cargo plane he was on crashed into a mountainside near his home in South Africa’s Western Cape province. I mourned his death but still felt angry. Now I just feel sadness when I think of him. He never lived long enough to win back the love of his people. I have no doubt that he would have. And though his legacy is forever tainted, time has helped heal some of the wounds he inflicted. If for nothing else besides teaching me some valuable lessons, I still hold him in high regard.
Memory lane
The threat of a privately owned franchise league threatening cricket’s ecosystem is nothing new. And while the encroachment of the Indian Premier League and all its subsidiary competitions feels existential, it is not unprecedented. Between 1977 and 1979, Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket upended the status quo and helped usher in a new age of professionalism. And crimes against fashion.
Quote of the week
“This is the best day I’ve had in cricket and will probably be the best day I’ll ever have” – Tom Banton gushes after hammering 371 for Somerset against Worcestershire, the fifth-highest individual score in the 135-year history of the County Championship.
Still want more?
Spring is in the air and the Championship returns in style – Gary Naylor looks back at the opening round of games.
Northamptonshire chair Gary Hoffman gets his chat on with Matt Hughes.
And Carl Hooper’s life in sport: from West Indies to Australia via county cricket – Jo Harmon talks to the 1990s great.
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