DARREN STEVENS
I coach a number of 12-14-yearold seamers, and as you might expect the first thing we nail down is their stock delivery, whatever that may be. But after that I make sure they master leg-spin and off-spin, so that they can then add the slower-ball off-cutters and leg-cutters into their repertoire. And you can see the results. One of my protégés has a really good leg-cutter to the right-hander, but if he’s up against a leftie he can switch to off-cutters to keep taking the ball away from the batter.
We feed these boys with a number of slower-ball variations – it might be the one out the back of the hand, or the ‘knuckle ball’ – and it’s about working out which one fits best to the individual.
All of which is a mile away from the coaching I got at their age, which focused on seam, swing and, above all, line and length.
That’s not to say slower balls were not on the radar when I started out at Leicestershire in the mid-late 1990s. Conscious that I needed to improve my bowling to get in the one-day side, I’d pick the brains of some of the old pros such as Chris Lewis, Alan Mullally and Darren Maddy. Lewis, in particular, had an excellent leg-cutter.
But the landscape changed with the arrival of T20 cricket in 2003. The onus was on the batters to play their shots and take the attack to the bowlers, so taking pace off the ball as a form of deception took on a new dimension. In the latter part of my career, I’d say more than half of my deliveries in white-ball cricket were the knuckle ball (of which more later). It brought me bags of wickets in the shorter formats, a lot of them caught at cover or extra point because the batter was early on the shot.
In my final match as a professional, the 2022 One-Day Cup final between Kent and Lancashire at Trent Bridge, the vast majority of the 48 deliveries I sent down were knuckle balls. It was a dry pitch which held the ball up and made it difficult to drive, so taking the pace off and making it stick in the surface was mighty effective.
No matter what sort of slower ball you bowl, what sort of grip and wrist position you employ, one fundamental factor will determine its success: the speed of your arm as you deliver the ball. This must be exactly the same as for your stock ball, otherwise the key element of deception is lost. The most successful exponents of the slower ball all have that in common. The other important skill is to release the ball with an upright seam just as you would for a normal delivery. Disguise is the name of the game.
One of the best in the business during my time was Liam Plunkett. “Pudsey” was seriously quick, and he’d always serve you up a couple of sharp bouncers early on. Then you’d get another short one except that it was an off-cutter at a fraction of his normal pace, and by the time it got down the oth
