Amrit Mathur: Right arm, over the wicket (Kapil Dev Interview) (Sep 2 1996)

Right arm, over the wicket...

Amrit Mathur

Talking to Kapil Dev - especially when the subject is fast bowling - is always instructive, always a pleasure.

I had a taste of that pleasure the other day when, in a relaxed moment, the highest wicket-taker in Test cricket history sat down with me to discuss various aspects of his art...

What follows, is Kapil`s thoughts. In his own words.

On his bowling action: In my mind, I always had a picture of Richard Hadlee, just as Hadlee himself always thought of Dennis Lillee`s action.

I concentrated on keeping my left arm straight and on bringing it down close to my body after delivering the ball - that way, you don`t open up while bowling and remain sideways.

Secondly, where my right hand was concerned I always told myself to release the ball and not drag it down short, the idea always was to pitch up, make the ball swing and force the batsman to play forward, make him drive at you. Pitch up, pitch up, I kept telling myself. I had worked out these two or three things for myself, and I think whatever coaches may tell you, ultimately every bowler has to sort out these checks himself.

On controlling out-swing: It always helped me to grip the ball lightly on the seam and keep the fingers open. In my opinion, Javagal Srinath holds the ball tightly with both fingers very close to each other. Moreover, if the ball was moving around too much I would grip the ball across the seam, again with fingers wide apart.

On the basics of quality fast bowling: One keeps learning from experience, but I feel a great fast bowler must first be a great athlete and should stay very fit. What is the point of having one good season and then breaking down and missing the next two?

Your run up, delivery stride must be smooth so there is no extra burden on the body. Also, remember that every great fast bowler has taken wickets while bowling up - people like Hadlee, Lillee, Imran were quick but their wickets came by pitching up and making the batsmen play forward. When you bang the ball in you lose pace, the ball becomes slower. The yorker is more effective because it is much faster than a bouncer.

India`s new ball attack: It is good that two, three quality bowlers are coming together now because this way, the batsmen are kept under pressure all the time. When I was alone, I would only bowl some overs at full pace and then cut down, knowing that by the end of the day I will have to bowl about 25 overs and each time the captain needed a break he would throw the ball at me.

On Venkatesh Prasad: I was very impressed by him because he consistently bowled a beautiful line. In fact, the only thing I told him was to keep his right arm straight and just concentrate on the off-stump, the other two stumps do not exist - at least in England, where the ball moves after landing, there is no need to do anything else. I also told him not to overdo the bouncer, it is enough to let the batsmen know that you can bowl the short ball, let him guess and wait for it instead of bowling one every over.

On Dominic Cork: The ball with which he got Salim Malik in the second Test was a beauty. The ball moved late and did just enough to get past the bat to hit off stump - great ball, it would have got most batsmen in the world. The movement should be just enough to get the edge and no more, any movement that is more than the width of the bat is a waste. Compared to an outswinger, any inswing is easy because as the ball comes into the body of the batsmen it is simpler to make contact.

The entire art of out swing bowling is to move the ball late and to only move it enough to beat the bat - banana swing looks good on TV but does not get anyone out, it is a wasted ball. Every batsmen in the world is troubled by the away going ball, a good genuine outswinger will beat and rattle the batsmen, but strangely in most cases it does not get a wicket.

On Waqar Younis` classic inswing: The problem with Waqar is because he gets the ball to move at that pace. When you bowl round arm, as Waqar is doing nowadays, you will get natural outswing. But Waqar can get the ball to reverse swing and land at the batsmen`s feet at great pace. If he loses pace, then the players will be able to play with the swing to the leg side - but they can`t do it at the rate Waqar is bowling now.

Imran Khan`s great plus was his outswing - with his high arm action he could bowl a genuine away-going ball and at the same time get the ball to move in. As a result the batsmen always kept wondering which way the ball was going to move - he could go away from the crease and still bowl a perfect outgoing delivery.

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