England take on Australia in the final test match of the summer this week, at The Oval in London, with English cricket in the doldrums. They have already lost the Ashes series this year, and not chalked up a win against any opponent for 10 tests. The problem is swing – or rather, the lack of it.
Swing bowling, making the ball swerve towards or away from a batsman at speeds of around 70 miles a hour, was one of the things that made Ian Botham great. But Botham is gone, and with him one of the traditional strengths of English cricket. India have always had their spinners, the West Indies their pace bowlers, and England, until now, had their swing bowlers.
According to the Test and County Cricket Board, the English game’s governing body, ‘the general quality of swing bowling in the domestic game is as low as it has ever been’. Alec Bedser, one of greatest exponents of the art, agrees. ‘We have gradually produced a crop of bowlers who cannot bowl swingers,’ says the former England cap who took 14 of the 20 Australian wickets that fell in the first test at Trent Bridge in 1953.
To make matters worse for England, Pakistan have now become the world’s leading exponents of swing bowling by developing the technique to extraordinarily devastating effect. Last year, Pakistani bowling destroyed English batting with a previously little-known phenomenon, reverse swing. Deliveries that ought to have swerved one way swerved the other, all too frequently taking an English middle stump with them. Several wild theories were proposed to explain the success. Allan Lamb, the English batsman, accused Pakistan’s two…
