Stop the press: The yorkers are back in the IPL

The yorker, the vicious neutraliser, has been back in fashion after that post-midnight heist.

Five-star return

Bowling smarts behind the conditional execution of the yorker among the league’s leading seamers is the biggest takeaway from the week’s action, specifically between Matches 32-40.

It didn’t work out on a hotter evening in Ahmedabad a couple of days later for Starc when Gujarat Titans’ Jos Buttler expertly wiped out the contest with 46 needed off five overs and an eight-wicket cushion behind him. Starc’s yorkers of varying lines, threaded to tighten the game, were needled out across the square in Buttler’s streak of five successive boundaries.

The fuller deliveries didn’t work in the final over either, with one landing in the slot and soaring off Rahul Tewatia’s blade over mid-wicket for six and another yorker sliding down to the boundary from an inside edge, marking GT’s win.

Precision, with the right quantum of anxiety set in on the batting side, is of utmost essence in the yorker assuming charm at the other end thus far in this edition.

Aided by a self-combustible middle-order, Lucknow Super Giants pacer Avesh Khan drilled two decisive yorkers to deprive Rajasthan Royals of another easily winnable game in Jaipur. After castling Yashasvi Jaiswal and Riyan Parag in the 18th over, Avesh nervelessly fired in a slew of yorkers and fuller balls (almost passing through as block-hole missiles) to eke out a magical two-run win for Lucknow in the 20th.

Source – Cricket-21 (Stats after Match 38, April 20)

Unlike the heyday of the death-over devastation of the Starcs and Lasith Malingas from even a decade ago, sneaking in yorkers is not solely about wicket-taking anymore, for batters rarely slip into a static stance at the crease today.

Nearly 16 hours after the Avesh show-stealer in Lucknow, RCB’s veteran seam double of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Josh Hazlewood orchestrated a stunning concentration of yorkers against Punjab Kings after finding them on the mat even before the 17th over. Beginning from 129 for six, the Punjab lower-order only gathered 22 runs in 23 balls before Marco Jansen’s desperate need to connect helped him dig out Hazlewood’s final delivery, another yorker, down the ground for six. But for 3.5 overs of yorker-invested lengths, RCB’s seven-wicket win was scripted without breaking much of a sweat in sultry Chandigarh.

Unlike Starc’s night in Delhi, where a tinge of the pronounced reverse swing added to the spice of the yorkers, Bhuvneshwar and Hazlewood resorted to immaculate control of the length to stupefy Punjab.

Data suggests that most teams have surpassed the number of yorkers effected at the death in the 2019 season, the last full-fledged season without any restrictions on saliva-application or conditions.

The same holds individually for Starc, Avesh and Bhuvneshwar too, who have already effected as many yorkers or more than the tally from the preceding season. In only five innings this season, Avesh has bowled 14 yorkers in the slog overs (17-20), exactly half the number from the 2024 season, while posing a better economy so far.

Varied smarts

While the saliva ban lift has supposedly assisted several pacers to produced reverse-swing at nominally lower speeds, as Mohit Sharma did in the Powerplay against Rajasthan, a thorough quick like Starc has generated the unconventional swing at his characteristic speeds above 85 mph (135 kph), aerodynamically proven to generate the reverse nature.

It can be noted that despite the saliva ban, reverse swing has made its presence felt in recent years — particularly at last year’s T20 World Cup in the Americas and 2023 ODI World Cup in India — a purported by-product of a reinforced seam of the white ball by the manufacturers somewhere around 2020.

There have been other sly operations of the delivery too. Gujarat Titans speedster Prasidh Krishna produced a scorcher within the unusual setting of the Powerplay to nip out an in-form KL Rahul.

Prasidh’s uncommon fury ball had the delivery deviously angled down and across from outside the off-stump. With a supposed wobble off a partly three-finger release and a late change in direction of the scrambled ball from the block-hole, the Karnataka pacer rapped his statemate flush on the toe, prompting a stunning lbw dismissal off yorker length.

One cannot put an exact finger on why the yorkers have resurfaced as lavishly as it has with such incisive spurts mid-way through the season. Batting strike rates haven’t overtaken manic 2024 as yet and no one’s complaining.