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When Brendon McCullum hit an amazing number of 13 sixes en route to his century on the opening night of the Indian Premier League, we all shuddered at the plight of bowlers to come in the next five weeks.
However, after the first round of matches, there could be a sigh of relief all around — and one can almost imagine the smirk on the faces of the likes of the experienced Shaun Pollock and Glenn McGrath.
After Sohail Tanvir’s ‘six pack’ or the way the wily Pollock has brought back the Mumbai Indians into the tournament with his economical spells for the last couple of matches, it looks there is still hope for the bowlers.
Irfan Pathan, whose spells stick to the ‘dos’ of a Twenty20 contest, also shared the limelight as the highest wicket-taker after the first round.
If anything, all this is going to make the contests even more riveting in the coming days.
Rather than watching the batsman going for the ambitious slog off every delivery, it would make better sense to see an occasional trickery with the change of pace or a perfectly delivered yorker — weapons that are likely to buy the maximum number of wickets in the shorter variety of the game.
The evolution of the game has often seen the tide changing either in favour of the batsman or the bowler. In the glory days of Test cricket till the mid-1970s, the dice was often loaded against the batsman who had to literally fight the challenges of nature as well as the guile of the bowler of an uncovered wicket — not to talk about the classy bowlers of the past.
This is precisely the reason why Sunil Gavaskar still gives more weightage to a 50-odd scored on a seaming track at the Old Trafford in the 1970s rather than many of his later centuries.
While covering the wickets made it more of an even battle between the bat and the ball, the surfeit of one-day cricket — which kicked in with a gusto from the 1990s itself — gradually started making the bowler a loser again.
A pace bowler was asked to bowl straight, for an extra yard of swing might lead it be called a no, while the yorker became very much the stock in trade.
If you are a spinner, better cut out on the flight and just rip them in, for your job is to check the run-flow in the middle overs.
Things have now gone worse in the new age game that is T20, where a tailender may be picking up Brett Lee for a six of even a Murali may be hoiked out of the ground with the spin.
It’s hence, in all fairness, that bowlers get their place to shine in the sun.
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