Spirit of a bowler: A comment on "The power of a six"

This is a post that reacts to a view expressed in the Different Strokes post mentioned in the topic. ------ Zainub, as far as highlighting Afridi's one-point approach to the game is concerned the piece is fine. We are all fortunate that Woolmer is so far quite unable to ‘rectify’ Afridi and rob us of such entertainment in the process. Shahid Afridi is unique in cricket and should be spared the conventions.

However your last paragraph indicates that just like most others who write about that Miandad six in the print media on either side of the Indus River you too think more from the point of view of a batsman than that of a bowler - least of all an attacking bowler like Harbhajan. Batsmen love to think that they ‘scar’ bowlers. Natural, as they would like to get even after being shaken by certain dismissals. That is why the Gavaskars, the Ramizes and others of their ilk – all batsmen - would invariably impress the thought (of an over-boundary being a mental injury to the bowler) on young followers of the game whenever a bowler is hit for a relatively big six.

A true bowler can be scarred by one and only one depressing development - his skipper’s reluctance to bowl him. You will see a bowler score eighty runs with the bat and not take a wicket and go for 6 sixes in an over in the same game, and continue having such days for an entire season, but he will still come back next season (if picked by selectors) / next match / next day / even next ball – thinking not of switching trade but of picking up another wicket.

He would always want to be the one holding the red leather, even when his tormentor is batting. Why on earth will someone who can back himself to win matches – that greatest of gifts that is denied even the greatest of batsmen except in exceptional circumstances (I classify ODI's under these) - worry about conceding a set of half-dozens for a period longer than that particular evening? Ask even a part-time player like me, a bowler who once conceded 5 sixes in an over (of a 10 over match) for my ‘mohalla’ (neighbourhood) team and yet was back next match not thinking much about it. In fact I completely forgot the last day’s horrors at one stage of this second match and was getting annoyed when the team leader refused to bowl me (understandably, on hindsight) until the match was all but won!

Chetan himself, let alone entire India team, would not have remembered the Miandad six as badly as he eventually was forced to but for the truly scarring Indian sports media who have this peculiar trait of hurting the national players more than their on-field opponents, the greatest examples being bad support to the team playing ICC WC 2003 and the ‘internal disintegration’ during Australia’s end-2004 visit.

As "the" Sanjay Manjrekar once said anchoring a replay of that match, India lost for the next 10 years simply because Pakistan team were obviously the better outfit in that period.

If conceding six (or five, or four) sixes in one over on a batsman-friendly track could scar a world-class bowler then stretching the same philosophy to the other limit we could expect Shoaib Akhtar, after that double strike of Rahul and Sachin at Eden 1999 off successive balls in a match (where Pakistan were struggling to come back until that stage), to have taken off promptly for a week long holiday.

C'mon - it is only 36 (or 27) runs in a Test match of four innings and forty wickets.

Hope you agree with what I said just now. Otherwise Sehwag's not done yet; on the 3rd weather interrupted (and expectedly wicketless) day he was already dying to take strike when Danish started his spell but then decided against taking revenge for his zonal mate Harbhajan today.

Going by the ‘scar’y implications, all cricket lovers in Pakistan can as well arrange a demonstration at PCB early 4th day morning so that they get Sehwag to face Shoaib & co. with no more than a stump. Anything wider may result in a few scarred careers. (Remember the 2004 Multan Test and the man who invented the doosra ?)

Like any true Indian or Pakistani I have been sucked into the Indo-Pak clash mode after Zainub’s well-timed ‘sledge’ at Bhajji’s temperament in the midst of a Test match. To be fair, sometimes the ‘scar’ factor may be true in ODI’s in nations where selection systems are whimsical, as a high-scoring over that turns an important match can end a career. Even then though, it is less of the ‘batsman scarring the bowler’s psyche’ phenomenon and more of career insecurity.

The ‘Tendulkar scarring Warne’ phenomenon must also be another typical instance of the media-baiter in the bowler playing it up in the process of paying tribute to a truly great player of leg-spin, as Warne’s place in team was always secure before or after that series until Lara & team put it on line in West Indies 1999.