CHENNAI: The first match of another double-header Sunday. Sunrisers Hyderabad are up against the Kolkata Knight Riders. The latter, needing a win to consolidate fourth position on the table, are playing Lockie Ferguson. The Kiwi speedster, capable of generating serious heat, had been treated as a decorative piece thus far. Not anymore. After warming the bench for the first eight games, the 29-year-old was drafted in. And he was devastating: including the Super Over, his figures read 27 balls, 13 dots, five wickets, zero boundaries.
That eureka moment to field Ferguson in the first place, however, did not come from the team management. While speaking with the commentators on air, Brendon McCullum, the coach, said he got the idea after casting envious glances at the Delhi Capitals and Mumbai Indians. McCullum's inference was simple. Teams with express bowlers were doing well, so why not use our own express bowler to test out his hypothesis.
McCullum's assertion is quickly becoming one of the Indian Premier League's main themes: bowlers capable of generating extreme heat lording over proceedings.
The top six of seven in both the wickets and dot balls column are fast bowlers (Jofra Archer, Jasprit Bumrah, Anrich Nortje, Kagiso Rabada, Trent Boult and Mohammed Shami). Add Chris Morris and James Pattinson and as a group, they are thereabouts in most metrics used to assess the worth of a bowler.
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Why is that the case in a year when all pundits predicted that the spinners would be kings? Noted international bowling coach Ian Pont puts it down to a combination of factors, with 'genuine speed' playing a crucial role.
"Any bowler, whether fast or slow, needs to be able to react and respond in a live situation," he told The New Indian Express. "Those who are able to mix things when needed - and be unpredictable - will often outwit the batsman. But genuine speed is unsettling. Pace can make players get into bad positions to strike the ball a long way. Archer and Ferguson have generated a great deal of heat and therefore pressure and that isn't always easy to score from."
While spin has held its own in the last few editions - the likes of Yuzvendra Chahal, Rashid Khan and Imran Tahir have finished among the top wicket-takers since 2015 - pace has been the single biggest currency this time. Even if the numbers can be deceiving sometimes, Dale Steyn also echoed the same sentiment during a match between Rajasthan Royals and Delhi Capitals on October 14.
Archer (3/19), Rabada (1/28) and Nortje (2/33), between them, bowled three spells where the speed gun regularly went above the 150 kmph mark. In fact, Nortje touched 156 kmph, the fastest in IPL history, that night. Watching on, Steyn became a fan. "KG, Archer, Ana," he tweeted. "I'd have paid to watch them live tonight. Fast bowling is strong, and this competition is being dominated by these beasts."
Pont agreed. "In white-ball cricket, if you can move it or have pace, it gives an advantage with the batsman trying to set themselves," says the coach, who spent a considerable amount of time developing a young Steyn. "The faster bowlers still have to bowl in the right areas to make it hard, but pace means your slower ball is often more dramatic."
Ferguson gave the perfect example of this. After cranking up beyond 145 kmph, he deceived Priyam Garg with a slower ball that barely touched 120. The result? A rearranged off-stump. The speedster also went to his change of pace deliveries to castle both David Warner and Abdul Samad in the Super Over.
"The quicker a bowler can be adaptable, the better. So it pays to have two or perhaps three different deliveries up your sleeve for a batsman. This means either bowling to his strength and getting him to miss hit the ball, or trying to get him to hit where he is less comfortable," Pont observed.
A case in point is how the pacers have bowled to Sunil Narine in this IPL. Up to his rib cage and asking him to pull where he is not comfortable. The next challenge for the pacers is to continue this trend on tired pitches during the closing weeks of the IPL.