By Garfield Robinson
West Indies fast bowling great and one-time record-holder for wickets in Test cricket, Courtney Walsh, was spectacularly successful on their 2000 visit to England.
The hosts won the series, but the Jamaican was almost unplayable, capturing 34 wickets in the five games at a staggering average of 12.82 and at a strike rate of 38.88.
His methods, as always, were simple ones.
His pace had eased by then, but he was still as precise as ever in length and direction and elicited a fair bit of sideways movement on green-tinged surfaces. He didn’t swing the ball much.
In fact, I recall him exhibiting some frustration at two deliveries in one over that swung waywardly down leg.
Wobble Seam
He did his work off the pitch with what we now call the scrambled or wobbled seam.
This was the first time I took notice of the seam wobbling as it made its way towards the batter.
Depending on how it landed the ball could deviate left or right, and as Ian Botham was fond of saying, “if I don’t know which way it will go how will the guy at the other end know,” or something to that effect.
The scrambled seam was not a deliberate ploy by Walsh or any other bowler at the time.
One reason I am confident of this is because just recently, Sir Curtly Ambrose, who was also on that 2000 English tour and who himself benefitted from the scrambled seam, was relating to Ian Bishop that they were all taught to try and deliver the ball with the seam bolt upright, with the only variation being the cross-seam delivery.
The scrambled seam, therefore, resulted from a failure to command a steadily upright seam position.
But it worked out well for Walsh and Ambrose that series.
Scramble Seam in England
It was particularly useful in England where greener wickets and the Dukes ball, with its proud and durable seam, made sideways movement more likely and more enduring.
In most other parts of the world it was the Kookaburra ball that dominated.
Possessing a seam that was flatter and less sturdy, it was not as amenable to swing and seam as the Dukes ball or even the SG ball that is used in India.
West Indies fast-bowling great Ian Bishop said the Kookaburra was the ball he “least liked
It was not surprising, in hindsight, when the West Indies Cricket Board (now Cricket West Indies) jettisoned the Kookaburra in favour of the Dukes ball for the start of the 2010-11 home season.
Since then pacers like Kemar Roach, Shannon Gabriel and Jason Holder have profited from the change, racking up fairly decent performances at home and even spurring their home side to a few surprising series wins.
Effect in Australia
Meanwhile, in Australia, there were concerns about the kookaburra ball as well, with aficionados believing thinking the Dukes and SG balls were superior products that facilitated a better balance between bat and ball.
Highly regarded cricket analyst, Jarrod Kimber, had this to say on the matter: “A couple of years ago they were very upset that everyone was slagging off the kookaburra balls and they were talking about another ball called Dukes or even SG and saying those were better balls.
And so kookaburra said, ‘ok, we’re gonna change our ball…we’re gonna reinforce the seam and make that seam a little bit stronger.’
And they completely changed the structural integrity of the cricket ball…since that’s happened there’s been one very big change in Australian cricket and that’s the wobble ball.
Before that the wobble ball was not really seen as an effective thing within Australia. Once kookaburra changed that ball the wobble ball completely took over.”
The new and improved kookaburra ball, along with slightly more spiteful surfaces have made Test-match batting in Australia an even more difficult line of work than it was before.
This predicament was highlighted not long ago when Shamar Joseph utilized pace, accuracy and the wobbled seam to capture 7/68 and bowl the West Indies to a stupendous victory by eight runs in Brisbane in January 2024. The home side was chasing a meager 216.
Primary Wicket-Taking Delivery
What was once an error in the release of the ball has now become a full-blown tactic. And the scrambled or wobbled-seam ball is now a primary wicket-taking delivery.
It is often more potent than the swinging ball because the movement occurs off the pitch and therefore later than the ball that swings in the air, thus allowing less time for batters to adjust.
And so now we come to the current Border/Gavaskar series. We have already witnessed the effects of the relatively new kookaburra ball on a somewhat spicy surface at Perth.
The hosts would have undoubtedly been contented dismissing the visitors for 150. But they could only manage 104 in reply, only for India to rack up 487/6 declared in their second innings to win comfortably by 295 runs.
Worrying for Australia was the fact that the surface seemed to have held more terrors when the visitors were bowling than when the hometown bowlers were in operation.
The ball seemed to swing, seam and bounce more when propelled by Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj and Harshit Rana than when it left the hands of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.
Jasprit Bumrah
Jasprit Bumrah collected five wickets in the first innings by employing a variety of the skills of the fast-bowling trade.
He swung the ball, seamed it off the track, and urged it to bounce disconcertingly. He also has a superpower as a fast bowler in that he releases the ball closer to the batter than, I’m sure, every other fast bowler in the game.
It was revealed, for instance, that the ball leaves his touch 40 cm closer to the batter than when bowled by teammate Harshit Rana.
That means the ball would appear to be almost three kilometers per hour faster from Bumrah if he and Rana bowled at the same pace.
Now that’s not nothing and adds to the degree of difficulty the batter must negotiate when facing the Indian captain.
Bumrah is nothing if not a handful, and Australia will have a dickens of a time dealing with him this series provided he remains fit.
But his support bowlers are no slouches either and have shown signs that they could flourish in Australian conditions with the improved Kookaburra ball.
Siraj is a regular user of the wobbled seam and employed it to great effect in capturing the five wickets he did in the game.
Rana’s first test wicket was facilitated by the scrambled seam as well, and it was a pearl of a delivery.
The pacer came round the wicket to the left-handed Travis Head and angled the ball in before seaming it away to hit the top of his off-stump. Head had no chance.
Still, the series is young and there’s much time for Australia to come storming back. They have formidable fast-men too who could do damage in the current environment.
The stage is therefore set for an enthralling series that the fans will savour.
