Thoughts on Balaji

Balaaaji! Zara dheere chalo! The cry was heard around the stadiums in Pakistan during the historic Indian tour. His big smile, swarthy complexion, and some banana outswingers had warmed him to the Pakistani people. He came back home a hero only to lose his way in the ODIs and now has vanished from the scene. Gone…just like that.
Lots of tinkering with his action, quite a few ‘niggling’ injuries has meant a relegation to sidelines and once you are out of an Indian’s sight, you are out of his mind. The selectors have relegated him to domestic cricket.

A fully fit Balaji who is in control of his bowling would add teeth to the Indian bowling lineup dominated by left arm bowlers, even, and especially in, Indian conditions where swing dies after few overs and one needs either pace to hustle or seam movement to create nuisance. Balaji started out as a wide-of-the-crease bowler with a big incutter but a yearning not to be a one-trick pony set him on a pursuit of a ball that goes away. It was in England during the India A tour in 2003, although he got only 12 wickets in six first-class matches, that he got a few to swing it away. "I focussed on my follow through and release. During my run up, my arm was away from the body. Now it is closer,” Balaji had revealed then. The changes have been constant, frequent features in his bowling. And in the Irani Trophy 2003 at MA Chidambaram stadium, playing for Rest of India against Mumbai, he straightened a few, moved it away and then did Wasim Jaffer as he shouldered arms to a ball that nipped back in. The transformation while still not complete was on its way. If he hadn’t made few of the deliveries to straighten and hold its line, Jaffer wouldn’t have tricked to let the fatal one to go. Still there was much work needed to be done: Apart from a need for a smoother run-up, he had to learn how to use the non-bowling left arm before release that would prevent his head from falling. And that came under the tutelage of Bruce Reid in the Indian tour of Australia in 2004.


At the tour game in Hobart he ran in closer to the stumps than before, stopped falling towards his left shoulder as alarmingly as he did before, his cocked up wrist action got more straighter, head while not yet still, got into much better position. He still had his nip-backers, removed Martin Love with a one such beauty. In the ODIs in Australia, he started to get his outswingers going but they started from well outside off stump as his right hand, at the point of release, was more closer to the left shoulder. It was always like that for him: he would deliver from the extreme width of the crease and have that angled cocked up wrist action and would send across the nip-backer. Those who have played gully cricket would know, how we used to lean towards the left, move the throwing right arm towards left shoulder and then with a cocked up wrist release it, hoping it would be a huge nip backer. Of course the slogger at the other end would have just stood there and smashed it over deep mid-wicket!

Back to Balaji. He had changed the wrist position ideal for an outswinger but his bowling arm was still close to his left shoulder. A young Courtney Walsh used to do this, chest on action and right arm inclined more to left shoulder. Balaji then worked on increasing his pace, apart from a smoother run up, he tried getting his upper body arch back just prior to the release, and also tried to get into a semi-side on posture. All his efforts have been geared towards achieving two things- outswingers and pace, two necessary weapons in bowler’s armoury but also maybe he had fallen in love with the outswingers so much that he nearly shun his old stock weapon, the big incutter. Walsh never lost it even as he adjusted his action to get the ball to straighten. Indian cricket followers would remember Aashish Nehra going through a similar crisis- burst onto the scene, in Zimbabwe, with some sensational outswinger to left-hand batsmen that would seam back in to the right hand batsmen cutting them into half. He felt he need to get that one that goes away from the right-hand bat and in going for it lost his original weapon. Of course the injuries had also forced Nehra to switch to a semi-open release action from the previous side-on but also the pursuit of the delivery that slants away had also played its role.

Its important to for any bowler to have a complete control over his stock weapon, that at any point of time he can fall back upon it. Balaji is not a swing bowler, rather was not one, and the attempt to widen the armoury has meant the old weapons in quiver have lost sharpness. Balaji in trying to create a new identity has ended up tinkering with his action too many times. Instead he would do well to get back to his basics and slowly crystallize his action and work on his fitness. Being neglected by the selectors offers him a chance to sweat it out in the domestics doing exactly that. His future lies not only in his wrist but between his ears.

Different strokes

It's fascinating to watch the techniques of different batsmen. Let me concentrate on the unorthodox ones- Sehwag, Gayle or a Smith.

Noticed how Smith plays his shots on the on side? Those sharp, short, violent jabs?
Unlike a more conventional way of bringing the face of the bat down on the ball and ,using the wrist to turn the face of the bat just on contact to flick it or on drive, Smith uses his arms more. He brings his bat down from say gully region, to meet the ball, like a straight drive played to midwicket, bat face straight.

Fleming, the Kiwi skipper, has a similar way of playing the strokes to midwicket albeit his back-lift is higher and follow throughs more. Used to get lbw or inside edge and start lookin ugly. instead of getting the bat straight down as he does for his special on drive (stands tall, elegant , great sight to watch),and then use his wrists to turn the ball towards midwicket,he would bring that bat from almost point and as a result at times runs into problems.

Shall follow up on this later

Cardus on his marriage

"There are many things about cricket, apart from the skill and the score. There is, first of all, the leisure to do something else. Cricket, like music, has its slow movements, especially when my native county of Lancashire is batting. I married the good companion who is my wife during a Lancashire innings. The event occurred in June, 1921; I went as usual to Old Trafford, stayed for a while and saw Hallows and Makepeace come forth to bat. As usual they opened with care. Then I had to leave, had to take a taxi to Manchester, there to be joined in wedlock at the registry office. Then I - that is, we - returned to Old Trafford. While I had been away from the match and committed the most responsible and irrevocable act in mortal man’s life, Lancashire had increased their total by exactly seventeen - Makepeace 5,Hallows 11, and one leg-bye."

The first black man to play Test cricket

With the West Indies now engaged in a Test match in Tasmania for the first time, it's timely to revive our memories about Sam Morris, the first West Indian and the first black man of any nation to play Test cricket. Morris, incidentally, was born in Tasmania. Ian Woodward tells his story

How the most elegant stroke in cricket was born

The left leg quietly put across the right to a break-back from Mold, then lo! the ball was going to the fine leg boundary, not with the weight or ponderousness of material object, but as a ray of energy out of 'Ranji's' sinuous blade.
- Neville Cardus

The origin of this much celebrated stroke is a rather interesting tale. Below, read AA Thomson's writeup on how it was 'born under hardship, adversity and a self-imposed handicap'.

'..Ranji gained an introduction to Fenner's and there was bowled to by relays of professionals, some of them the finest bowlers ofthe day, who tried to rid him of his worst faults. In practice he was tireless (C.B.Fry told me that one February day at Cambridge he saw Ranji, in fur gloves, bat two hours before, and two hours after, lunch to four first class bowlers.)

In trying to teach him to make sound defensive strokes (which he hated)Dan Hayward, the leading professional, took the drastic step of pegging down Ranji's right leg. Thus, as they say, is history born. Instead of playing a defensive shot, as his mentor had intended, Ranji inclined his sinuous body, flicked his supple wrists, and the ball went like a flash to fine leg.

Thus the most elegant stroke known to cricket was born under hardship, adversity and a self-imposed handicap.

About twenty years later, when he was less slim. less supple and far past his glorious best, I sat as near as I could to sight screen behind the bowler's arm at Lord's to watch if I could discover how this historic stroke was made. The bowler, and undeservedly forgotten man named Mignon, was bowling fast, but Ranji's leg glance was quicker- quick enough, it seemed, to decieve the human eye. There was that uncanny flick of wrists and the ball hit the pavilion rails at fine leg like a tracer bullet. He did not appear to have hit it hard; it was almost as if he had struck a match on it as it went by. It was not a chancy deflection or a sneaky 'tickling down the corner'. The full blade of the bat met the ball every time. It happened again and again.I was dazzled. I still am.

Five Aussie googly merchants

Ram Guha writes on the googly bowlers from down under. Mailey, Grimmett, O'Reilly, Benaud, Warne. Click here

But the first Aussie bowler to perfect the googly was probably, Ranji Hordern (Called Ranji because of his dark skinned color). A doctor who returned from his studies in USA and spotted and picked by Warren Bardsley, the former Australian batsman then acting as the sole selectorfor New South Wales. The national selectors picked him up for the tests and he took 12 wickets in his first Test against England and that against a side including Hobbs, George Gunn, Rhodes, Mead, Hearne, Foster, Woolley and Douglas.

However, after Bosenquet,the creator of googly, it was the South African quartret who brought the wild googly under some control during 1905-1910 - the golden age of spin in SA. (Hordern made his debut in 1911) However, sadly, the world war II which resulted in loss of two spinners and then the subsequent change to turf wickets played its part in the decline of spin in South Africa.

The googly men - South Africa's role in the development of the wrong'un

What is not widely known today is the role that South Africa played in the original development of the art of googly bowling and of its introduction into test cricket, says Brian as he takes us through the history of the wrong'un. The googly men- R.O. Schwartz, A.E.E. Volgar, G.A.Faulkner and G.C. White. How Reggie Schwarz learnt the art from Bosanquet and passed it on his springbok mates makes for an interesting tale.

The bizzare superstition of Victor Trumper

VictorTrumper, the legendary Australian batsman from the golden era, had a bizarre superstition. While bowlers held no terrors for Victor, the sight of a clergyman wearing a "dog collar" worried the life out of him. Once the great S.F. Barnes got Trumper early in his innings and Vic said: "I knew I would not score with all those clergyman about…"
Source: A speech by Asley Mallett

Which reminds me about superstition of another cricketer. Amar Singh from India.

Ram Guhawrote about it.

Amar Singh died in May 1940, six months short of his 30th birthday. (He was consumed by a mysterious fever: indeed, a month before he passed away he had been playing cricket). Even while he lived, however, he was obsessed with the idea of death. One who knew of this obsession was the great all-rounder, Learie Constantine, his colleague and rival in the Lancashire League. When Learie's club, Nelson, played
Amar Singh's team, Colne, the West Indian would come to the ground dressed in black. Naturally the Indian would ask what had happened, and Constantine would answer that he had just attended the funeral of a friend. This ruse was intended to put his opponent off his game, to so disturb him psychologically that he might not give of his best. Perhaps of all the tributes that ever came Amar Singh's way this was the most remarkable; that Constantine, a supremely gifted all-rounder himself, could not trust solely to his cricketing skills when playing against him.