To crush toes, or not to crush toes...
That is the question, PLUS: The Week That Was and the Weekend That Will Be
“Free the yorker!”
Or maybe it is, “Save the yorker!”
There was a bit of public and private pushback on my sentiment yesterday that went:
One of the more boring clarion calls in limited overs matches is “we just need to bowl more yorkers”.
Nope, came a few emails. We DEFINITELY need MORE yorkers.
Fair enough, I thought, nobody has a mortgage on ideas.
Still, I was curious as to what those who have been in the middle during the biggest moments might think, so I reached out to Grant Elliott, who has faced more yorkers than he has attempted to bowl, and watched a hell of a lot more. I always enjoy chatting cricket with Grant because he’s full of theories and is never shy to articulate them. While he said that “ultimately you should bowl yorkers,” he cautioned that it was just so difficult he understood why they’re not attempted more often. Here is a summation of his points:
Yorkers are really hard to bowl. Even if you release your yorker spot on, by the time they get to the other end against a batter who has advanced, gone deep in his crease or moved across his crease, they’re often not a yorker anymore, they’re just a bad ball.
Yorkers are definitely not irrelevant to modern bowlers, but they’re not necessarily a focal point either. Line is key. What you’re attempting to do as a bowler, particularly at the death or in the power play, is to stay out of hitting arcs. The most natural hitting arc is to hit from straight to the leg side. The key is to stay outside or inside of that arc and the easiest way to do that at this point in the game’s development is the offside wide line. There are not many batters with the power to manipulate that.
The yorker is a confidence ball that requires touch and feel. On those rare days where everything feels right - the run ups, the take-off spot and landing and release - you feel like you can land them at will, but only one thing needs to be a little bit off and they feel impossible to land.
A yorker that is a little bit off is cannon fodder. It used to be that a low full toss wasn’t a bad miss, but power hitters these days have made a lie of that, so it’s a delivery you have to nail.
Back of a length and pace off might not look as effective as a well-executed yorker but you have more margin for error and, to a point, those errors are easier to protect.
The yorker is the most telegraphed delivery in white-ball cricket because unless you’re pulling off a high-risk double-bluff, the batter knows it’s coming by the field set. You have to show your hand.
These are all solid points, but when Elliott started talking about biomechanics, I tuned in especially closely because to him it was the key reason why there are so few effective yorker bowlers in the world.
“The natural fast-bowling action is biomechanically designed for back of a length.”
It’s unnatural, he said, to bowl fuller with a high-arm action. Hence why the greatest yorker bowler the world has ever seen also happened to be a bowler whose action was, well, a little different - Lasith Malinga.
Shaun Tait, too, had a unique, slingy, round-arm action that delivered high-quality yorkers (and a lot of junk in between), but they are few and far between.
“You’ll often hear commentators and pundits saying that Trent Boult or whoever’s action is getting a bit lazier in white-ball cricket because they’re going more round-arm, but this is deliberate,” Elliott says. They’re going lower to better execute their full balls.
“Name me five amazing yorker bowlers who are playing today,” Elliott challenged. “There’s Jasprit Bumrah, who although he has a high action, it’s still unique and deceptive. There aren’t many others.
“Matt Henry can’t bowl consistent yorkers, Boulty can’t bowl consistent yorkers. Tim Southee is our best yorker bowler but we can see what happens when he gets it wrong. Mitchell Starc can’t bowl yorkers until it is reversing. These guys do not lack skills, it’s just a hard thing to execute.”
Incidentally, this is not a new debate, nor is it winnable either way because it’s very difficult to avoid wrapping two things into one argument: the concept of a yorker versus the execution of a yorker.
In researching this I came across a data-set from the 2019 World Cup that demonstrated that point. Indian seamers had attempted a little more than 60 yorkers during the death overs of that tournament. The batters strike rate against India when facing the yorker was 92. That’s pretty good, right? Less than a run a ball. Why wouldn’t you bowl more? The answer is that the key word from above was “attempted”. They successfully executed the yorker a third of the time they attempted it. Balls that were a little overpitched and fell into the low full toss category went at a strike rate of 167, and those that were slightly underpitched went at an eye-popping 229.
It’s not just a New Zealand problem, then.
Teams struggle with the yorker and it’s not just a matter of practising more. As Jarrod Kimber wrote on Cricinfo way back in the misty recesses of 2017:
We have all heard a commentator, or our drunk uncle, say, “Just bowl 24 yorkers, it’s simple.” It isn’t simple. [Joel] Garner couldn’t bowl 24 successful yorkers in a row. And that is with a batsman standing in roughly the same place on the crease each ball…
Bowlers do bowl yorkers, and they do practise bowling yorkers. But no cone jumps outside off stump... Cones stand still.
Elliott has another question, directly referencing the ball that made him a national hero. “Ask yourself this: why didn’t Dale Steyn bowl a yorker in that semifinal?”
I’m not sure it’s the best line of inquiry to leave with, because I can only answer it by saying this.
He probably should have.
***
Elliott had great fun popping Steyn’s ill-fated back-of-a-length delivery into the Eden Park South Stand and indeed, many have enjoyed hitting cricket’s equivalent of a 58-degree lob wedge into the seats.
The straight boundaries are a joke, as articulated by Australian journalist Adam Hawse, who noted that he had played backyard cricket with bigger boundaries.
Unsurprisingly, Eden Park hit back, with CEO Nick Sautner claiming:
There you have it. Conclusive evidence that Eden Park is better for cricket than the MCG. Always thought so.
NZ v Australia, Auckland, tonight 7.10pm, TVNZ+
NZ v Australia, Auckland, Sunday, 1pm, TVNZ+
Note: Apologies to those who read yesterday’s newsletter on email only and ran into some first-class nonsense directly after the placement of The BYC podcast. Somehow two paragraphs got merged into one, but not before half a sentence and a few random letters went walkabout. The corrupted paragraph should have read:
Having watched them play some truly atrocious cricket over the years, it always makes me laugh when New Zealand is accused of minnow bashing. We are/ were the minnows!
THE WEEK THAT WAS
Sportico ($) released their list of 100 Most Valuable Sports Franchises, with Dallas Cowboys, aka “America’s Team”, holding down the No 1 spot at US$9.2 billion.
(Stick with this story because even if US sports aren’t your thing, there’s a kicker about a sport close to a lot of New Zealanders’ hearts at the bottom).
It’s a very US-heavy list as you might expect with four of the five most valuable leagues - NFL (1st), MLB (2nd), NBA (3rd) and NHL (5th) - in the world, with only the Premier League interrupting the hegemony.
Some 82 of the 100 franchises are American, alongside four Canadian teams who play in American-headquartered leagues. Of the 14 others, there are three Formula One teams, Ferrari (71st), Mercedes (81st) and Red Bull (88th); six Premier League sides in Manchester United (13th), Liverpool (29th), Manchester City (35th), Arsenal (57th), Chelsea (58th) and Tottenham Hotspur (70th); the two La Liga monsters in Real Madrid (19th) and Barcelona (23rd); while Bayern Munich (34th), Paris St Germain (60th) and Juventus (98th) are the sole representatives of the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Serie A respectively.
Market size plays a huge role, with seven teams - Knicks (3rd), Yankees (5th), Giants (6th), Jets (10th), Nets (55th), Mets (77th) and Rangers (85th) - from metropolitan New York in the mix. Los Angeles also has seven teams in the top 100, and the state of California a staggering 12 teams in all.
TOP 20
Dallas Cowboys (NFL), Golden State Warriors (NBA), New York Knicks (NBA), Los Angeles Lakers (NBA), New York Yankees (MLB), New York Giants (NFL), Los Angeles Rams (NBA), New England Patriots (NFL), San Francisco 49ers (NFL), New York Jets (NFL), Washington Commanders (NFL), Chicago Bears (NFL), Manchester United (EPL), Philadelphia Eagles (NFL), Las Vegas Raiders (NFL), Houston Texans (NFL), Los Angeles Dodgers (MLB), Miami Dolphins (NFL), Real Madrid (La Liga), Boston Red Sox (MLB).
Here’s a franchise not in the Top 100, but it will be very shortly: the Mumbai Indians. It has only been in existence for 15 years yet is valued at $1.3b. The franchise has invested in multiple T20 leagues as it looks to expand its revenue sources, though the Indian Premier League will always be its bread and butter.
Here’s the staggering thing about the IPL: It’s already the 13th most valuable league in the world and it is the only one in the top 30 that has less than 200 games per year. In fact, it only has 74. Compare that to the MLB or NBA, which have 2430 and 1320 matches respectively.
The IPL’s average revenue per match is $16 million, third only behind the Premier League ($18.4m) and the NFL (a crazy $68.4m per each of its 285 matches).
For further comparison, the richest domestic rugby championship is the French Top 14 (31st), which averages $2.1m in revenue per game over its 187 matches.
If you’re the owner of an IPL franchise, or the administrator of the league (the BCCI), do you look at this and think, “Ah, we’re going pretty well, it’s time for us to pause and allow the boards of barely profitable cricket countries to jam up the calendar with cricket,” or do you say: “We want more everything - more teams, more matches, more of the calendar and more money.”
The lack of question marks should indicate that it was a rhetorical exercise.
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There were a couple of interesting quotes in this piece detailing that High Performance Sport NZ will appeal the Employment Relations Authority decision that they were obligated to negotiate in good faith with the Athletes Cooperative, which represents cyclists and rowers.
HPSNZ director Steve Tew indicated they would appeal because they believe that if any employment relationship exists then it’s between the athletes and their respective national sports organisations.
Mahe Drysdale came back with a couple of zingers: “It’s a little bit disappointing that they are going to spend taxpayers money on fighting a legal battle in the courts rather than actually putting that toward the athletes and getting those world class performances on the world stage.
“They are going to cry poor to us and say we don’t have enough money, we can’t do this, yet they’ve got plenty of money to go and spend on lawyers. It’s just where your priorities are I guess.
“They’re willing to do anything to not engage and have a meaningful relationship with the athletes. They can say the NSOs employ us but at the end of the day they have all the money, they have all the control and unless they want to become just a funding organisation, and that means they’ve got to pull all of their staff, they’re effectively running sport in this country.”
Last weekend might have been the least sports newsy weekend I can recall, aside from those years when Christmas Day falls on a Sunday.
I scoured the local news sites and publications for anything worth pointing to and the pickings were so slim that for the sake of all involved, I eschewed the normal Monday wrap.
But even if it had featured a bunch of All Blacks on a stag weekend getting into a street fight in Foxton - which, to make absolutely clear, did not happen - it’s unlikely it would have knocked this story off top billing, which I first noticed while tootling around on the BBC website late on Sunday night:
“Shane Rose: Show jumper competes in mankini.”
Wow, I thought, that is not only impossible not to click into, but it’s also going to go viral. Sure enough, both Stuff and Herald were leading their sports sites with it for large parts of Monday and while you might expect me to rail against the trivial nature of the modern media landscape, all I can say is when presented with such a click-generating gift, you take it.
Australian showjumping star Shane Rose, a three-time Olympic medallist, was stood down by Equestrian Australia for wearing a skimpy “mankini” costume during a fancy dress class at a recent event.
Rose said he was unaware someone had been offended at the event, until EA stood him down.
“My phone went nuts [after the event] with people laughing and things. But I have been told there was one lady, and I think the words were she showed concern, not a formal complaint,” Rose said.
“With a bit of luck this will all be a bit of a laugh in a few days and we can all move on. I wore a costume which you could see at a theme park or a beach, potentially no one has done it on [a] horse, but there you go.”
Yes, it had been an extremely quiet weekend.
P.S. It has been mercifully resolved and Rose has been freed to compete again.
THE WEEKEND THAT WILL BE
A couple of things I’ll be booking time with the telly for…
Is it just me that finds the start of the Super Rugby season such a confusing time? On the one hand it annoys the hell out of me that rugby cuts across the best cricket-playing weeks, but on the other I always have this warm sense of optimism that this is going to be a really good year for footy and tonight is just the start of it.
One thing I can’t stomach is the footy pre-season. I refuse to engage with it and that is probably a sensible stance for anybody to take… other than someone who purports to be a sports writer. I have absolutely no doubt that when I watch the match (on delay) tonight, I’ll be shocked that (add your own name here) is now playing for the Chiefs.
At the risk of getting the season off to an unnecessarily spiky start, I reckon we see a new winner in June.
There was an interesting interview with Rob Penney, Scott Robertson’s replacement, in the Irish Examiner ($) recently. He gave, by rugby standards, some candid answers as to why he left Munster (basically because it wasn’t working alongside the ambitious Anthony Foley, who replaced him and died of a heart attack in 2016).
As it relates to this season, this was his most interesting line:
Replacing ‘Razor’ in black and red country is no midnight run. The Crusaders have racked up half a dozen Super rugby titles on the bounce. One could say, it’s a lose-lose. The only way is down?
“It’s easy for me, cos I’ve enough grey hair and no ego. Coaching is all about living your life vicariously through the players, allowing them to have fun and express themselves, and hopefully some wins on the back of it. ‘Razor’ has left the place in really good shape, and we have people wholeheartedly committed to continuing the success. I just have to be a conduit. Empower your boys, empower your staff and don’t make any hurdles for them.”
Chiefs v Crusaders, Hamilton, tonight 7.05pm, SS1
Blues v Drua, Whangarei, tomorrow 4.35pm, SS1
Highlanders v Moana Pasifika, tomorrow 7.05pm, SS1
Jurgen Klopp is going to get a statue at Anfield no matter what happens for the rest of this season, but no doubt the German and his band of merry Kopites would love another piece of silverware or two. Until more than half his first-choice team started falling over with injuries, this would have seemed a logical place to start, but this appeals as a coin toss now.
Chelsea v Liverpool, League Cup final, Wembley, Monday 4am, BEIN Sports
Time to sell Auckland’s three stadia and build a decent one on the waterfront. Multi use. Retractable seating. A roof. Pubs and restaurants on hand. Public transport. Holy moly…almost like a grown up city.
Great yorker analysis from the Jav. Maybe it's time for T20 sides to look at a death specialist bowler, who only bowls 14th-20th over (and probably ideally bats in the top 6)?
And maybe the next thing we need to talk about is player mics...crazy that an international player had to ask for silence on a broadcast. Let a fielder be mic-ed up, but not a guy about to take strike and should be thinking about a million other things about his game than answering another inane question