Is a bowler only as good as the wickets he takes?

A bowler’s wicket haul is an instantaneous thing of joy. It is an evolutionary process of making the batsmen cramp up for room, cracking up his rib cage, make the ball whiz past his nose, bang hard on the helmet, sometimes the taunting and sometimes even the dropped chances. Such spells make us realize what Test cricket is all about. But when you are going to scrutinize only to the wickets the bowler picked, what justice are you doing to the traditional art of fast bowling?

Are his wickets the only hallmark of his greatness?

A good spell is characterized by the momentum of the bowler that gears up. It is a subtle art of getting the batsman into all sorts of trouble and eventually knocking him off. That moment is priceless. But the effort behind a priced wicket gets some beating. The bowler has to be consistently working in his process of build-up in order to cash in on his good spell.

There is always a mental battle between a batsman and a bowler. The bowler is trying everything to force the batsman to do something and the batsman is always cautious not to give his wicket away. The epitome of the battle is reached when both the bowler and the batsmen pay due respect to each other. Even during the afternoon of a lazy day’s play, the battle is always on. The batsman only wins if he could see the bowler off for the rest of the Test and the bowler can only win if he gets the better of the batsmen irrespective of the number of runs he scored. Such contests brighten up an otherwise boring day of Test cricket.

Most of the times, the spectators and, to an extent, even analysts tend to have deeper observations of a batsman than of a bowler. The reason is simple – after the day’s play, all the stats show are the boundaries, 2’s, 3’s and everything else a batsman could be judged off, but for a bowler, it is just the wickets that he picked, which is really unfair. The viewers are inclined write off a bowler if he ends up wicketless and gives away few boundaries, even if those boundaries were off the edges. He might be downgraded along with a part timer who could have ticked his wickets column with tail-enders or when batsmen were giving away their wickets cheaply.

Ishant Sharma came to the spotlight not only for dismissing Ponting, but for proving an Indian can bowl over 140 and be extremely accurate. More recently, Siddle’s monumental effort at the WACA against South Africa showcased not only his physical toughness, but his mental strength which kept us on the edge of our seats, as if he was going to take a wicket on every ball of his spell. When we saw Steyn ripping through the Pakistan batting line-up in the recently concluded 1st Test match his spell was what stood out, rather than just the wickets.

A batsman’s century and a bowler’s five wicket haul are a result of his grit and hard work and can take a serious toll on your concentration. But still a bowler can be easily put off guard compared to a batsman. A batsman can be in all sorts of trouble for his first 20 or 30 balls, but still can recover. He has a break every hour in a day’s play of Test cricket, whereas the bowler is on the back foot with just a couple of boundaries hit off him He then tries something different even when what he was doing was perfect. Or in the worst case scenario, his captain could have other ideas and take him off the spell. But to put all that behind and show the same enthusiasm and energy to go for the kill every time the captain throws the ball to the bowler bestows upon him the hallmark of a true great.

More than the wickets, the spell that showcases the build-up to the inevitable wicket should never be forgotten. As Richie Benaud would say, “These are the reasons we love our cricket; the sounds and images of summer”.