Fast bowling Philander's way

Non-stop sports can tire you out these days. If you are one of the soccer buffs watching late night games on TV, cricket games in New Zealand are redundant. Even if you are a plain Jane (or Jack) like me and most Indians, least bothered about who plays where in Europe, England, Spain or Italy, NZ matches don’t attract you as much as they did years ago.
Partly because there’s no novelty and partly because there’s just too much of sports around the world. Records are being broken at breakneck pace; runs, especially, are cascading from everyone’s blade. It is difficult to sort 10 best innings in cricket history. Chances are that all those 10 may have been reported in the last 10 years. In future, the 10 best may just come in one year, courtesy Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
There’s also another reason why matches in New Zealand have lost that zing. The dairy nation doesn’t have a superstar that can pull me. The last one, Shane Bond, lost track due to terrible back injury and another in the making, Brendon McCullum, could never scale the heights expected of him.
So most of the reasons to watch games there are provided by opposing teams. Earlier this month, it were South Africans who gave me a few to try and wake up early. I couldn’t do so regularly but just managed to catch a glimpse of some players. Jacques Kallis may be boring but how can you ignore a player who has as many runs as Sachin Tendulkar has and more wickets than Zaheer Khan. Or Hashim Amla, who seems to have overcome the doubts and looks a pleasant stroke maker. Or of mercurial Ab de Villiers. Or the merciless Graeme Smith.
But most of all, it is their pace battery and young sensation, Vernon Philander, that I was most interested in.
Now, all those Indians who have suffered inferiority complex over the years of not having genuine pacemen and who have overhyped any trace of hope that has come their way, should take note of this.
Some experts too are guilty of this inferiority complex, including Sourav Ganguly.
But pace bowling isn’t all about pace. I am not saying this. Philander’s deeds are saying this.
The South African bowls at around 130-140 kmph and is the third fastest in terms of Tests to get to 50 wickets. In an era of batting tracks, this is phenomenal.
Most of his deliveries are in mid-130s and that, along with his record, says a lot about his skill.
I remember one particular instance which I conveyed to my younger bro, a faded paceman who has less respect for Virat Kohli than others as he’d got him twice in club/academy cricket matches in sub-junior days. Philander bowled five away deliveries and followed it up with another that jagged back in to get rid of a batsman. Our collective response was: here is a bowler. He thinks.
Philander is no doubt helped by Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn, both of who can’t just bowl at great pace but can also move the ball. But it is the skills that make him a dangerous proposition. Yeah, he also touches 140 but not regularly. It doesn’t show that any of the Protea bowlers are trying for pace. It comes naturally to them.
I have spoken to a lot of players and many rate Zaheer Khan as India’s most complete bowler ever. Zak can use the crease, the pace, the bounce, anything to get a wicket. He is wily but his fitness fails him badly. He is good despite bowling at about 130 kmph.
So while we celebrate Umesh Yadav’s rise let’s give this point a thought --- raw pace can’t always get you there.