Empire Of Seam
England's ever growing set of managers, directors and mentors ought to practice praying. They ought to pray for better bowlers. And they ought to pray that other Test teams stop producing good bowlers
England have appointed Robert Key as their new Managing Director of England’s Men’s Cricket.
Cricket boards have traditionally had a boss (a President or Chairman), an administrator (a Secretary or a CEO), selectors (one or a panel), a head coach for the senior men’s team, and an administrative manager (the person responsible for booking flights, hotels and looking after logistics). Sometimes, the boss has hired specialist commercial managers or accountants to negotiate endorsement deals, broadcast deals and other such things. Media managers have looked after PR and relations with the press box. Key is not the first to occupy this new MD position. His predecessor in the role was Ashley Giles who was recently sacked.
As with all such appointments, their success and failure depends on exactly one thing - whether or not England win cricket matches, series and tournaments. There is no other bottom line. If Rob Key basically puts his feet up and never shows up for a day’s work, but England win, he will be remembered as a great Managing Director of England Men’s Cricket. If England lose, then even if Key answers a thousand emails a day and produces copious reports week in and week out, it will not matter. He will be remembered as a failure. This is the brutal reality in competitive sport (unless you are Manchester United or some other global brand, which, like an elite Bollywood film studio successfully ensures that its sources of profit and success are kept as far away as possible from winning on the field.)
Winning cricket matches, especially Test matches, requires exactly one thing - a better bowling attack than the opposition. It does not require a second thing. A wise suit running things to build the greatest Test team in the world, would invest every dollar and every hour in finding a battery of world beating bowlers. Only bowlers can win Test matches. Everything else is trivia.
For at least a decade, England’s new ball pair - James Anderson and Stuart Broad - were good enough to ensure that England had a bowling attack which was at least as good as the opposition in many series and better than the opposition in most. Recently, the ground has shifted. Several attacks can match Broad and Anderson with their own new ball bowling pairs (New Zealand, India, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, and perhaps even West Indies), and more.
Ball tracking records are available for roughly 500 of Broad and Anderson’s 1177 Test wickets. These records tell us about seam movement, swing, line, length, speed and release height (among other things - the provide a complete description of the trajectory of each delivery). The table below organizes these deliveries by the amount of swing and the amount of seam. Swing is what occurs through the air, seam is what happens off the pitch. These are given in degrees. Swing is measured as the difference between the direction of the ball at release and the direction of the ball just before pitching. Seam is measured as the difference between the direction of the ball before pitching and the direction of the ball after pitching. In the record, for seam movement, inward movement to the right hander is positive, while outward movement to the right hander is negative. For swing, inswing to the right hander is negative, while outswing to the right hander is negative. In the table below, absolute values of seam and swing are considered. This is done because, in the overall ball by ball record, the effect of inward and outward movement is evidently symmetrical.
Seam movement is significantly more lethal than swing, as you can see from the consequences of increasing the seam movement in terms of average and strike rate to the consequences of increasing swing. This is entirely reason - seam movement occurs later than swing, leaving the batter less time to adjust. For instance, 1 degree of seam movement (with minimal - 0 degrees of swing) improves Broad and Anderson’s bowling figures from 40/87 to 23/46. One degree of swing only improves it from 40/87 to 34/72. The pattern continues down the line. 2 degrees of swing and 0 degrees of seam is less lethal than 0 degrees of swing and 1 degree of seam. The table also shows how frequently each type of delivery is produced (‘b’ is the number of balls of each type). This pattern is generally true for all fast bowlers in Tests 1.
This is an uncomfortable fact for partisan English viewers who tend to bristle at any suggestion that English pitches are doctored for seam movement in exactly the same way that Indian pitches are doctored for spin, and that it is seam movement which lies at the heart of Broad and Anderson’s brilliant success in England, and not “swing”.
It is easy to see why partisan observers enjoy talking about swing (just as a certain type of partisan Indian fan enjoys talking about a batter’s technique against spin). Swing can be attributed to “atmospheric conditions” or “the weather”. And groundsmen do not produce the weather. By fudging the issue by talking of “seam and swing” its easy to evade the charge of designer home pitches in England. This charge is easily made for pitches in the sub-continent, whether they are turners or featherbeds. This self-delusion though, hurts England. It warps their view of what Broad and Anderson actually provide them (consider how controversial the decision to drop the two has been).
Outside England, seam movement is less reliably available than it is in England. It is not surprising that England have managed to take 20 wickets in a Test outside England marginally more often when only one out of Broad and Anderson has played, than they have in Tests outside England where both have played.
This then, is Robert Key’s challenge - to recognize the reality that England’s Empire of Seam is in fact, an Empire of Seam (and not an Empire of Swing or an Empire of Fast Bowling). It is recognize that Broad and Anderson are to England what Kumble and Harbhajan Singh were to India: world beaters in helpful conditions, but limited (despite their excellent control) elsewhere. Further, it is to recognize that England need to build an all-wicket bowling attack which can bowl teams out twice in most conditions. This means finding fast bowlers and spinners, and not just more seamers. It is true that Anderson and Broad have been great seam bowlers. But England have a replacement for them in Ollie Robinson. To be a top attack, England need more than just great seam bowling. They need speed and spin in equal measure as well.
This is an impossible assignment, not just for Robert Key, but for any manager. Great bowlers do not grow on trees. The best a manager can do is to ensure than when a potential great bowler is spotted, he’s not squandered. The specific answerable questions reporters who are nonplussed about Key’s appointment should ask Key would be -
“What is your plan for ensuring that England can take 20 wickets in a Test everywhere in the world?”
“Do you think England would benefit from preparing a wide variety for pitches for their home Tests so that they can compete abroad, just as Australia, India, New Zealand and South Africa do?”
“Why does the County Championship structure require changes given that England have had world beating teams before?”
“England have failed to take 20 Australian wickets in 13 out of their last 15 Tests in Australia.”
“What do you think will make it more likely for England to produce better spinners and more genuinely quick bowlers?”
It is unlikely that these questions will be asked. Cricket and its discourse favors respectability over competitiveness. It is what produces the inordinate attention given to top order batters. It is also what produces ever increasing layers of managers and directors.
Even though this desire for respectability should be seen for what it is, it should not be condemned. Great bowlers are do not grow on trees. They cannot be manufactured in a lab. They are acts of God.
Robert Key ought to pray for God to favor England with 2 or 3 great bowlers and build a more diverse Empire. Or he ought to pray for God to favor England and deny its opponents great bowlers who seem to be plentiful at the moment. This will restore England’s Empire of Seam. It might be an idea for him to hedge his bets and pray for both.
The record for all fast bowlers in Tests is given below.
