A grand subterfuge

Shahid Afridi: his bowling has a lot to do with his enhanced stature within the Pakistan side © AFP

Enough - or as much as can be said about something so random and intangibly spectacular - has been said about Shahid Afridi's batting. Of his bowling, which is more consistent but less dramatic than his batting, less is said and understandably so. But with 38 wickets since June last year - in 29 ODIs and four in the second ODI against the West Indies, maybe it warrants a little more attention.

Actually, forget how many wickets he has taken. As against the West Indies, the ambience his bowling operates and succeeds within is the key to his bowling. Arguably, with the tragic-comic run-outs of Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shiv Chanderpaul, the match might have been over. But Runako Morton, a flurry of hyperactive fidgets and movement, was keeping West Indies interested, winding up the situation, making the match taut.

In nine balls, Afridi fiddled with it and finished it. First Morton was beaten by everything; pace, length and flight. A couple of balls later, Dwayne Bravo was deceived by flight and length too, but even more by a late, lazy, lilting drift in the trajectory of the ball. Wavell Hinds' wicket was the cleverest, Afridi exploiting the left-hander's migration to off by bowling him round his legs.

It isn't an isolated incident either, for this is the precisely the type of realm in which his bowling often comes to life. In the VB Series finals against Australia earlier this year, Australia through Andrew Symonds and Damien Martyn were making light, pleasant work of a heavy, difficult pitch, threatening a huge total. Afridi had been hustling and bustling deliveries through till then. But two in quick succession he gave loop to and both resulted in refreshingly traditional leg-spin dismissals; Martyn was stumped driving and Darren Lehmann caught behind (so he was reverse-sweeping). Australia's momentum vanished and a target that threatened became instantly manageable.

Against India at Eden Gardens last year, during the Platinum jubilee game, he ended an ominous VVS Laxman and Virender Sehwag collaboration, finding the edge of the former and bowling the latter and keeping India under 300. He has even unveiled this habit in a Test, at Bangalore, when batsmen weren't pressured to attack him, when he still broke partnerships, when he still picked up key wickets, invariably soon after coming on. And ultimately, with his dismissal of Tendulkar, he sealed it. Just like that, innocuously, he does it.

In a sense, it isn't entirely bizarre that he has been successful. He did, after all, begin his career and get picked for Pakistan as a legspin replacement for Mushtaq Ahmed. But is it really legspin he bowls? His action suggests that he bowls it, the culmination of a lazy, unplanned run-up. In some strange way, his action carries the barest, yet inexplicable trace of Anil Kumble's.

He also, as legspinners do, has requisite variety, although even that isn't of a conventional sort. His stock legbreak doesn't usually turn that much; occasionally as its' owner, it does misbehave, generally when he holds it back and gives it some air. There is a traditional back of the hand googly that curves rather than spins in, but the more dangerous alternative is the offspinner, delivered with a traditional grip almost as if he can't be bothered with the deception of the back of hand. And then, of course, there is the faster one, whose effectiveness is unquestioned but execution is the subject of frenzied and, strangely, thus far private debate. The pace of it suggests that he got into the wrong line, but when it touches 80 mph, he can vary the speed of his bowling as he did against the West Indies, within six balls, by as much as 16 mph. For what its worth, Michael Holding emphatically concluded that the action was clean on TV.

Crucially, he has good control. He may still suffer with his line occasionally but his length is the more difficult to pick and put away. Hitting him straight, aerial or otherwise, becomes difficult at his pace, but also the awkward, fullish length he finds. And some intelligent field placings - he rarely bowls without three men in close proximity in the point region - means that his economy-rate over the last year has mirrored that of his career - a very respectable 4.64 runs per over.

Additionally, he goes through his overs as he does his daily life, at an unnaturally hurried rate. He is relentless, aching for the ball in his hand after every delivery, barely pausing for breath at the top of his mark and bounding in, relentless. It's almost like he's trying to fool the batsmen, a grand subterfuge, whereby batsmen don't realize that he is bowling and before you know it, he's through his ten, gone for barely any runs and with wickets to boot.

Of course, he can be taken apart given the right flatness of surface and a spirit of batsmenship similar to his own. Against India recently, he struggled on dead pitches and against his own kin in Virender Sehwag and, to a lesser degree, Mahendra Dhoni. But as Kamran Abbasi pointed out in the May issue of Wisden Asia Cricket, because he has rediscovered his bowling, his original calling in life, it has helped him to adjust to his enforced, and ostensibly more destructive role with the bat. With it, he now occupies a place at the core - a well-populated rather than sparse, individualistic center - of this Pakistan team,and much of its recent progress.