The new coach has got the attack pitching the ball up rather than relying on computer-prescribed plans of attack
There is an apocryphal story, more of a parable really, from the early days of computers. A system has a hardware failure and so the company calls in an expert, who looks for 10 minutes, marks with a cross the place where lies a faulty part, and departs. His invoice, �10,000, stuns the chief executive who insists on a breakdown of the charge. "To marking cross on faulty part, �10.00," it read. "To knowing where to put cross, �9,990.00." This, then, comes from the school of specialist expert knowledge.
Then there is the other school, succinctly put by Basil Fawlty as the "bleedin' obvious", the one where wood cannot be seen for the trees. The trouble with this is that it may not be bleedin' obvious to those who cannot think for themselves, the ones who, like Watson in The Scandal in Bohemia, see but do not observe.
These past couple of weeks, in Melbourne and now Sydney, the Australia bowling attack has run riot against an Indian batting side that is stellar, if increasingly only on paper. And it has seemed simplicity itself. First, provide some pitches with a bit of humour about them, nothing too ribald, but good fun. Then encourage the seamers to drag batsmen forward, get a little sideways movement in the air or off the pitch (actually much of what passes for seam movement is a modicum of late swing with the ball just continuing its new path), and watch as the vultures wait in the slips to pick over the carcass as the catches fly in.
The Australian trio of seamers, Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus, rejuvenated after his Ashes hammering, and the new boy James Pattinson, have been exceptional in the two Tests to date, bowling as a unit and each complementing the others. A new selection process and head coach have played a part, together with the injury, fortuitous rather than calamitous, to Mitchell Johnson from whom it was previously insisted that Australia would eventually get some consistency.
But most of the plaudits have been directed at the new bowling coach, Craig McDermott, who appeared to have leapfrogged candidates with more established credentials but was a magnificent Test?match bowler for all that. I would not pretend to know his bowling ethos but it would not require genius to work out that his preferred length is fuller than would appear to have been the norm before his arrival.
The thing is this, though: which school of thought is he coming from here? Is he the expert arriving and revealing a secret known only to an enlightened few? Or is he just stating the bleedin' obvious, that if there is lateral movement available of any description, then it pays to pitch the ball up (a few feet we are talking here) so that batsmen are in what Kenny Barrington used to call two-man's land, where they know they need to come forward but cannot do so with complete comfort, but neither can they play back with safety. In other words, the length that is drilled into the England team, where the ball will hit the top of off?stump.
Of course the answer is obvious. This is no secret recipe passed down from one bowling generation to another. It is a fundamental of the game and I dare say that McDermott must be wondering what on earth it is that his predecessors have been doing instead. There is a reason for this, though, and it is that, while there are many extremely intelligent bowlers out there (in a cricketing sense), the modern bowler is spoon-fed information.
The England team have a computer analyst who will provide them with reams of data, on every single aspect of their own performance and that of the opposition. And from that they will be given a strategy, with David Saker, the England pace-bowling coach, reckoning about half the input comes from him and the other half from the bowlers. It is a big part of his job the main part probably, and was instrumental in winning the Ashes.
But he is all too aware that as a result many of the old skills ? particularly the manner in which the very best would assess a new batsman from the way he managed his throw-downs and warm?up nets, to how he emerged from the pavilion, physical stature, held the bat, took guard, played his strokes ? have disappeared. Watching Richard Hadlee, say, or Malcolm Marshall work over a batsman was an education in itself.
Then we get the antithesis. At the MCG, during England's disastrous Ashes tour of 2006?07, a piece of paper was discovered on the floor of the members' area, appearing to contain England's bowling plans. One such, concerning Andrew Symonds, said "bouncer essential". So whenever the seamers were on, for the entire six and a half hours it took him to make 156, there was a man back on the hook. The plan demanded it. And how many times did he hook? Go on, have a guess. I think Sir Richard might have worked that out for himself.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/04/australia-india-second-test-craig-mcdermott
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