It doesn’t matter which era you play in. Wickets are the only way you can contain. Restricting the batsmen to six runs in the first over may look okay but in the next over they will hammer the other bowler. Giving ten runs and taking a wicket – I’ll take that any day.
I was inspired by the great West Indian fast bowler Joel Garner’s action. I gained confidence knowing I was emulating his action and eventually perfected the Yorker.
Bowling in sub-continental conditions is not easy for a fast bowler. You have to be consistent and persistent to succeed, especially when you are bowling to the likes of Sangakkara, Mahela, Samaraweera, and Dilshan.
MS has always been a bowler’s captain.
I was a bowler – left arm, smash it down as fast as I could. I did a lot of work with Damian D’Oliveira, and I probably had a chance of doing that for a living. But when I reached 16, I knew I couldn’t carry on playing both football and cricket, and I was already in the Shrewsbury squad.
I would love to do a biopic on a bowler like Zaheer Khan or Harbhajan Singh. I would love to see their struggles on screen.
When I started out, I wasn’t a thinking bowler, but talking to seniors and coaches helped. They would always tell me that I ought to be clear about where I wanted to bowl before I ran in to bowl.
I have been bowling at the death sometimes. You need to focus. You know if you miss your target, you will go for a boundary, but it’s also good because it makes you a really good bowler. You practise hard, and you try to bowl in one area most of the time.
Have a little protection if that helps your bowler – Brett Lee always wanted a cover and a midwicket because they helped him bowl his natural length and made him more effective as a result.
Jofra makes any team better. He is the most naturally gifted bowler I’ve seen and I don’t think he realises how good he is. Some of the things he can do at the click of a finger are just ‘wow.’ It’s pretty special to watch.
My father was a coal hewer from Goldthorpe, a coal-mining village in South Yorkshire. He played for the Yorkshire second team as an opening fast bowler – to me he was a gorgeously heroic man. He helped form a union and closed down the Barnsley seam because it was seeping gas, and saved many, many lives.
I have always seen myself more as a batsman than a bowler.
Had I not got into acting and modeling, I would have been a part of the national cricket team. I’m a right-handed batsman and a pace bowler and have won lots of awards during my college and school days.
You have to have a part of you like that as a bowler – that fire in you to keep going.
As a bowler, you have to constantly have to learn new things, and that’s been my main aim all the time.
If you’ve got one bowler – particularly a fast bowler – who is really aggressive, all over the opposition, he brings the rest of the team along with him.
At the end of the day, nobody drops a catch on purpose, and even the fielder gets frustrated. As a bowler, when a few catches are dropped, yeah, that is frustrating. But I think, ultimately, it’s part of the game.
It is important as a bowler that you always need to have a presence. If you lose that you lose quite a bit, a big part of your armoury. It comes naturally with me, and at times it is a huge advantage. I don’t want to lose it. I want to keep getting wickets.
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