Better late swing than never

Malinga’s effort can be loosely dismissed as ‘too much too late’ but considering the arsenal at his disposal and the general trend of the tournament this was on expected lines. The joint Man of the Match award winner, along with another seamer Charl Langeveldt, said the main reason for his late strike was the reverse swing—an aspect that comes into play when the ball gets older.

“It was not quite easy to get wickets early on but in the later part of the innings the conditions were conducive for reverse swing and the ball started to move around,” he said. That, to some extent, also explains Langeveldt’s wiping act against the Lankan tail.

For the South Africans, this was the second instance of reverse swing putting them in trouble. In their earlier game against Australia, they seemed on track to chase the target of 378. But once the Aussie pacer Shaun Tait came for the second spell the tide turned. At the end of the game, once again it was another pacer talking about his late burst and thanking the reverse swing for that. The one thing that Tait, the pacer with a classic action, shares with Malinga is pace and that, experts say, is the key to get effective reverse swing going.

During the final stages of the South Africa-Sri Lanka game, Chaminda Vaas too had the ball darting around but with the speed gun not quite showing a 140-plus kmph kind of reading he was ineffective. On these newly-laid hard pitches in the West Indies as the ball gets a beating, nursing just one side and hurling it fast can bring big rewards.

And that’s the reason Malinga (11), Langeveldt (9) and Tait (7) happen to be the leading wicket-takers at this World Cup. Another noticeable feature of this top wicket-takers’ list is the presence of specialist bowlers with the part-timers not quite able to make a mark. Though the magical spell of 8-4-5-3 belongs to the military medium pace bowler Andre Botha of Ireland in that now-famous match against Pakistan that was made possible by an overcast sky and a pitch with considerable juice in it. But most of the times the job of the part-timers in this World Cup is to keep things tight and let the specialists strike.

South African bits-and-pieces player Andrew Hall is aware of this situation after four games in this World Cup. “Our job is to keep things tight at one end and create pressure on the batsmen. This would help the strike bowlers at the other end,” he says.

Locals so used to seeing lightning quick pacer have a way to ridicule the part-timers. As soon as a modest pacer, with a short run up, ambles along to roll his arm the groan that is guaranteed from the stands is: “Oh maan, it’s a itsy, bitsy, nothing bowler.” Keeping the history of the region in mind, it’s heartening to see that the tearaway pacers have found a way to be among wickets. Better late, then never.