Around mid-noon, in London, when England started to copy Australia’s strategy of consistently bowling bouncers, Australia’s legendary captain Mark Taylor wondered if the umpires would start getting into act, no-balling the bouncers.
England had succumbed to the bumper-barrage, tamely swatting away to a packed on-side field. Australia had men at the boundary, and also close-by and England couldn’t find a way.
England then aped the tactic on Saturday afternoon. When Ollie Robinson started it, it didn’t seem to make much dent at his pace. Then came along Stuart Broad and Josh Tongue, and things started to change, as Australia lost Usman Khawaja, Steve Smith and Travis Head to bouncers.
“If a batsman doesn’t play a shot, how many bouncers you can bowl in an over. If both teams continue this bumper tactic – and they will.. The laws of the game were changed early 90’s: one bouncer a game, it became 2 bouncers in mid-90’s. Old intimidatory rules still exist. If the umpire feels it, he can still call it. It will be same when Australia bowl. If you keep bowling same length, even if its not about shoulder high, it’s still intimidation. It’s going to put a lot of pressure on the umpires, who can say, I am going to call it ‘no-ball’.
His co-commentator Kevin Pietersen wasn’t as sure. “This is not about intimidation. This is about taking wickets.”
Mark Taylor would talk about how it was in the 70’s during the hey-day of West Indian pacers. “You could battle through an hour and have 15 runs. The rules were then changed.”
“The battle lines have been drawn for rest of the series, Any time a partnership happens, both teams will go for this kind of tactic. Unless batsmen show a way to handle it, this is a pretty legitimate tactic,” former captain of England Andrew Strauss said. “England have been comfortable trying it as Australia haven’t gone really anywhere. So that theory of biding out time (against this strategy) hasn’t proved correct.”
“I don’t like watching it. I find it somewhat tedious. A bit predictable. You know where the ball is going to be before he bowls the ball, where the fielders are. You are just seeing what the batsman is going to do. It’s a bit two-dimensional to me. But that does not mean it’s not effective. Nothing wrong with their approach; anything that works, you should give it a go. We haven’t seen this strategy much in the last ten years or so,” Strauss said.
England had a leg slip, a short leg, two men just behind square-leg, one to the right of the umpire and another to the left. Australia too had a similar sort of a field, occasionally having men right at the boundary. The rules state that you can’t have more than two men on the right side of square-leg umpire.
And to think it all might have started because of an injury to Nathan Lyon. As soon as he fell, Australia had to adapt. It was then Steve Smith had a brain wave. “We’re going to miss Nathan this game and could miss him for a little while. I said to Patty (Cummins), ‘Why don’t we go for it with the short stuff?’ … “It was interesting. You ask most of the fast bowlers, they probably wouldn’t want to keep charging in and bowling short stuff, but while it looked as likely as it did on a pretty benign surface, I think it was the right way to go.If you get under a few, then we might stop doing it – maybe, I’m not sure – but they kept taking it on and they kept presenting opportunities for us,” Smith explained.
In 1991, the International Cricket Council (ICC) introduced a “one bouncer per batsman per over” rule in an attempt to discourage use of intimidation. In 1994, it was changed to 2 bouncers per over. Two balls above shoulder height of batsmen.
“Looking at the Fire in Babylon, looking at when (Jeff) Thomson and (Dennis) Lillee and all these guys were bowling quick and hurting people. Then I watch a black team becoming so dominant and then you see the bouncer rule start to come in and all these things start to come in and I take it, as I understand it, as this is just trying to limit the success a black team could have,” former West Indies captain Darren Sammy told Inside Out in 2020
“I might be wrong but that’s how I see it. And the system should not allow that,” he added.
One of the leading West Indies pace bowlers of the time, Curtly Ambrose, had written in his autobiography Time to Talk about the reputation that cricket had given the team back then: “There is a misconception that we West Indian fast bowlers are happy to knock batsmen out rather than get them out but that’s not true… Bouncers are a part of a fast bowler’s tool kit. If I have to bowl a few bouncers to unsettle you – that will hopefully give me a better chance to get you out. But it’s not just us who dish it out, our guys have been hurt too. It’s part of the game.”
The ICC also defined bouncers in 1994 after it introduced two bouncers in an over. “a) a bowler shall be limited to two fast short-pitched deliveries per over; b) a fast short-pitched delivery is defined as a ball which passes or would have passed above the shoulder height of the striker standing upright at the popping crease.
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