James Anderson’s relationship with the now famous wobble ball that excised out Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara in the first Test began in 2006. Anderson was impressed with what the Australian Stuart Clark did with it. The memory reared up again in 2010 when he saw the ball weaponised by that great Pakistani conjurer Mohammad Asif.
The look of surprise on Kohli’s face when the ball flickered unsteadily towards him before igniting the outside edge said much. When it left Anderson’s fingers, the seam was tilted towards the first slip. When it landed on a good length, it was tilted towards fine leg. Was it going to shape away, tilt-in, or plummet straight at him?
“It’s an absolute fluke (where the seam lands),” James Anderson told Sky Sports. “I want the seam to wobble slightly so it might nip either way off the seam. I kept the shiny side on the left, trying to angle it in. If there is any swing, it will drift in and might seam either way once it pitches.”
James Anderson has played 162 Tests and taken 617 wickets for England. (File)
Kohli can’t possibly know because Anderson himself doesn’t know. It’s a ball carefully, consciously, crafted so that its destination is unknown even to the creator. The perfect crime. Why does he not just go with the outswing shape instead of fussing over wobbling? “To make them play, basically. If I had bowled that ball with an outswing shape, there was a good chance that he would have left it. It’s to try to drag him into the shot and bring the stumps in play as much as possible.”
Kohli pressed forward to push at it with a slightly-opened bat face. It’s an approach that covers the potential targets – the stumps, the outside edge, and the front pad. A bat-angle which is usually good enough to extinguish any last-instant minor deviations either way — in and out. This one, though, dinked away enough off the track to send him packing.
Read | Explained: How different is the wobble-ball grip?
The wobble ball took out Pujara as well. . The seam of the ball, which was initially towards slips, kept wobbling this way and that in the air even as the ball kept tailing in but at the moment of landing, the seam was pointing towards slips again. The ball that seemed to be coming in with the angle, just about held its line and allied with Pujara’s tendency to defend with a closed bat-face, it lit up the edge.
“Again, a complete fluke!” says Anderson.
The “fluke” comment is technically correct but it doesn’t entirely paint the full picture. He does intend to land the ball on the jagged seam edges – half leather, half seam hitting the turf. A few years back, he had talked about it on Sky.
“The idea is to hit the corner of the seam”! Just like Asif did. The jagged-edge landing could well decide the eventual destination.
