5 ugly bowling actions in cricket

When you first enrol yourself in a cricket academy these days, you are taught the basics. For batting it will be the grip and then how to play the ball in front of your eyes, thrusting the pads forward.

If you are a bowler you will be told to tuck your left arm in, while hurling the deliveries. For a spinner, it will be how to rotate on the toe after the landing.

Though you need to know the basics to play a game of cricket, some have shunned them and went on to achieve huge success in the game.

In this piece, we list 5 bowlers who are successful yet have very ugly actions. Some of them are legends, others have just made their way into international cricket.

#5 Jeff Thomson

Thomson had a sling-shot action. He used to run in and almost like a catapult used to hurl the leather at the batsman. It is said he developed the action by watching his father, Don, who bowled the same way.

Jeff also had two brothers who almost bowled with the same action having picked it up from their father. The sling shot action helped him generate a lot of pace and steep bounce. Till date, Thomson remains as one of the fastest bowlers in cricketing history. He had such pace that once Greg Chappell refused to bat against him. In a Test match in 1975 ‘Thommo’ as he was lovingly called clocked a speed of 160.45 kmph and a year later he bowled one at 160.58 kmph.

Thomson played in 51 Tests and had collected 200 wickets with the slingy action.

#4 Paul Adams

Adams’ just before releasing the delivery

Now he is one of those cricketers who you can pick from a crowd easily as he is etched on the memory of every cricket lover. The left-arm spinner cannot be compared to the likes of Anil Kumble and Shane Warne but then again Paul Adams was incomparable.

Adams bowling action was like no other. It was weird. The run-up was all right as he reached the end of it, his left-arm completed the round action and it appeared if Adam’s head contorts the full 360 degrees before the release of the leather.

Even photographs show that Adam’s head used to point towards the sky at the time of release.

In his biography called ‘Paul Adams’, he had said,“People think I can’t see the batsman when I bowl, but I can. When I drop my head, I can still see him in my mind’s eye. It comes from practice. It is not just luck.”

Former England captain Mike Gatting had once described him as a ‘frog in a blender’. From 45 Test matches and 24 ODIs, Adams picked up 134 and 29 wickets respectively.

#3 Sohail Tanveer

Tanveer belongs to the rare breed of fast bowlers who are wrong-footed. He also has a peculiar action where he rolls his arm twice before delivering the ball.

For his unique action, he is often called ‘Pankha’ (fan) in Pakistan cricketing circles. But his peculiarity has not stopped him from playing cricket at the highest level.

He was quite effective in the ODIs and the T20s he has played so far for Pakistan but injuries too have hampered his progress.

For the record, Tanveer has taken 71 wickets from 62 ODIs and 52 wickets from 54 T20 games. He was quite brilliant the first season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) too where batsmen failed to pick him. In a group game that year he picked up 6/14 which remain the best IPL figures till date.

#2 Lasith Malinga

For someone who started off by bowling with tennis balls on a beach, an unorthodox action isn’t surprising. But Malinga’s is something else.

He bowls with a peculiar round-arm action which is difficult to pick for even world class batsmen. Actually, the point from which he releases the ball is low.

In a tour to New Zealand in 2005, the then captain Stephen Fleming asked the umpires to remove their tie and put on a white jersey around their waist so that the batsmen could see Malinga’s deliveries better. While Steve Bucknor agreed, Darrel Hair refused to do it.

“We found it extremely tough when he bowled a certain line and length to pick him up. We’ve asked for the uniforms to be changed. The umpires are there to help, not hinder. I know it’s tradition that they wear that colour, but this circumstance is pretty unique,” Fleming had told the media then.

Malinga couple with such a weird action was pacy too and bowled yorkers at will. He also developed a brilliant slower ball in later years. He has 470 international wickets to his credit.

#1 Jasprit Bumrah

For Bumrah it is all about his right hand. While into his delivery stride he barely lifts his left arm and tucks it in quickly as he releases the ball with his other hand.

When he first came into the international scene last year, he was quite a hard bowler to pick and therefore reaped rich rewards in Australia and the World T20 in 2016.

The action does look ugly but not his bowling as he bowls the yorkers and slower ones with ease and with full control. He has been one of the best fast bowling finds for India in recent years but has to work a tad bit harder to get into the Test team.

He is just 23 and so far has taken 52 international wickets from 34 ODIs and T20s combined.