"Swinging Both Ways"

WOW!! Last evening, Rajashtan yet again exposed the frailty of a lot of today's batsmen to high quality swing bowling - the theme of this post.

With Sohail Tanveer swinging (it) both ways, the top order of the much vaunted Chennai lineup was left exposed to what is fast turning out to be, the only weapon of mass destruction, left in the armouries of the fast bowlers of this world. Parthiv, Fleming and whoever the third one was were all victims of high quality swing bowling from the wrong footed open chested action of the same man who troubled India only so recently. He demonstrated his control by swinging the first 5 balls of his first over in and then, I think, just to let the batsmen know he was in trouble, he swung the last ball out- all at lively pace. Groping, fumbling, dazed batsmen are not often seen on the batsmen friendly tracks prevalent in world cricket today, and it was ever so refreshing to see the bowlers have their say for once!

In Englang, Zaheer and Arpy exposed the English batting line up and the lack of their technical prowess in countering controlled swing - in Australia, the same duo along with Ishant stripped the Australian batting line up of their invincible aura (much like England did with reverse swing in 2005) - Nathan Bracken continues to trouble all top order batsmen with his mixture of swing and seam as do much less famous names like Martin of New Zealand and the mule like Hoggard.

Commentators do lament on the inability of today's batsmen to play swing, and these practitioners of the game, so often, are so right. With batsmen swinging away at everything that is not swinging, perhaps swing is the answer to the swinging bats of these bullies.