Keep it Simple, Stupid!

And so the great Shaun Pollock has retired and left a gulf world-wide of class to be filled … South Africa have eased out his retirement and not made it so sudden by having brought in younger players through the Twenty20s and by the emergence of Dale Steyn. We can learn a lot from Shaun Pollock, or to be a little clever, we can learn very little from him; for the great man kept things very simple and concentrated on bowling on off stump or just outside. Heard of the corridor? Well Shaun Pollock was the key-keeper, the gate-keeper and Lord of all things to do with that little corridor outside off.

Shaun Pollock wasn’t the quickest (although Michael Atherton will testify that he was more than sharp in his early days), he didn’t show great variation, didn’t try and york everyone every single ball, didn’t puff his chest out and bowl bouncers and snarl at the batsman, and didn’t try clever slower ones every other ball. Old Polly kept things simple. He bored, stifled, and strangled the batsman into making mistakes and making them have to score off the good length in that corridor of uncertainty (remember the one on off or just outside).

As a batsman it is your job to score runs, and as a bowler it is your job to stop the batsman scoring runs. It’s not rocket-science … cricket is that simple! By bowling a good line and length, you are bowling to your field. Meaning that if you’ve set a normal seven [on the off side] and two [on the leg side] field and you are bowling outside off, then the batsman isn’t going to score too many, is he? And what are you doing to make that happen? Well, you are simply bowling outside off. It’s that simple! And that’s all old Polly did.

So if you are bowling outside off, and if the batsman is hitting conventional shots, then the ball should be going to your field placings each time. Thus, our friend the batsman won’t be scoring too many runs and will be getting frustrated. The only option for the batsman to score runs is to take a chance and try and work the ball to the on side, and he will therefore be hitting across the line of the ball and thus creating chances to take a wicket. He could also be using his feet to turn your good-length ball into a half-volley. Again you are creating chances for a catch to slip/point or a mistimed catch to mid-off.

The action you have taken is to simply bowl outside off, and by doing so you have created chances to take wickets. It didn’t hurt your brain, you didn’t have to snarl at the batsman, you didn’t have to try and bowl a different line and length each ball. All you did was keep it simple.

And that is exactly what the great Shaun Pollock used to do … “My philosophy was very much 'keep it simple, stupid'."