Ntini should not tamper with his winning formula

From what we have seen so far of South Africa in Australia, there has been a definite change in South Africa's bowling attack, and that is that Makhaya Ntini is now clearly the most penetrative option in Graeme Smith's hand. Shaun Pollock remains as a fine bowler who can keep things tight, but Ntini does appear to be the bowler more likely to take a wicket.

Ntini has come a long way since I first saw him in Australia as a youngster in South Africa's 1997/98 tour. He was just one of a group of young 'players of colour' that had been fast-tracked by the South African cricket authorities. However, he has taken advantage of that 'fast-tracking' to be a very fine bowler; maybe not of the very first rank, but certainly there is nothing 'token' about him now; he would be one of the first men picked in the South African side. He certainly showed his worth in the First Test against Australia, taking 5 for 64- moreover, those five wickets were all in Australia's top seven.

But in Australia's second innings, he was notably less effective, only taking 1 for 113, and that wicket was more from Ricky Ponting playing a rather lazy shot to a wide delivery. It was not Ntini's best day at the office.

Being a Test bowler is a hard way to make a living. You need everything to go right, and sometimes, even that is not enough. But to make matters worse, someone in the South African team decided to change Ntini's run up, and it seemed to me that it unsettled him.

It might have been the coach, it might have been the captain, it might have even Ntini himself, but it was a blunder.

Makhaya Ntini has a rather odd action in that he usually delivers the ball from fairly wide from the popping crease. This is not an approach that meets with much approval from purists and bowling coaches, for the very good reason that it makes it hard to obtain LBW decisions. Against a left hander, it becomes well-nigh impossible, and with Australia fielding four left-handers in the top seven this can be a problem.

So Ntini changed his run up in Australia's second innings, to come in closer to the stumps when he releases the ball. Someone from Getty Images took a magnificent photo of Ntini which shows what has happened, although it is not perfect. However if you are familiar with watching him, you can see that he's letting the ball go from closer to the stumps then he usually does.

While there are plenty of good coaching reasons to tell a junior player to change his action to remove this flaw, the case for doing so for a proven Test player like Makhaya Ntini is rather less, especially given his first innings success. One of the first rules of cricket coaching is, don't change what works. Even Shane Warne has a technical flaw (yes, really*) but there are almost 650 good reasons to ignore it.

South Africa missed a few tricks in Australia's second innings, but the decision to change Ntini's action was one of the least obvious and most telling one.

(Warne's "stroll in" run up does not allow him to generate the bounce that leg-spinners like to get. This may explain why Warne generally struggled on the slower pitches in the sub-continent until he found a way around it. But with 650 wickets, you don't tell him how to suck eggs. It is just that a technically correct coach would tell off a Warne imitator who tried to replicate his action)