words per minute
15
RahulChaudhary5170
00:00
Speed
Mohammed Shami: Good length,I great results A 'good length' in today's cricket is a thing of uncertainty. Not to batsmen as it used to be, but to the bowlers. It can turn an bowler into a menace or novice because batsman practicing range-hitting find it easy to line-up length balls. All it requires is a little patch of grass in the right positional or sometimes even a foot mark or a crack. Little else about fast bowling is as intricately dependent on the nature of the pitch as a ball on a good length. This zone was best exploited by the likes of Glenn McGrath, Vernon Philander, Ryan Harris is the past. You can add Mohammed Shami to that to that list from those going around today. On Thursday, both Jason Holder and Kemar Roach showed early that there was something on this Old Trafford pitch. Particularly running in from the Brain Statham end. Four of the five wickets the duo picked came from this end. Jasprit Bumrah would later pick up his first wicket after changing over to the Statham end, and then one more next ball. It was from this end that zone, where his real threat comes through. His upright seam is most useful when there's help off that length, breaking the ball in or out. The skiddy pace gets exaggreated with the batsman unsure how to line the ball up. The line when just outside off threaten both edges,stumps, pads and more.In his first over, Shami had Gayle edging one inside and then beat him on the outside. Then, he'd go on the have Sunil Ambris playing off the inside half of his bat, hit him on the thing and generally make him look all at sea. It was also from this end that Shai Hope creamed a boundary off that Shami length. Typically, such a shot would have received a bouncer riposte. The bowler can then claim to have the morale upper ground. But at Old Trafford, Shami could afford to go one better. He proceeded to bowl fuller than the 6-8m lengths that he was targeting. It resulted too in what could be arguably the ball of the day the seam upright, the ball pitching, breaking in sharply to go between bat and pad and onto the top of the stumps. Shami's other wicket in his first spell of 5-0-15-2 had come with him shifting the length other way around. The plan to Gayle, he revealed, was simple. "The one thing that I thought was that if I don't allow him to poen his arms, then it will be good because at some stage, he will go for it. " Job done. This was not a hat-trick that would make the headlines, but it had given India exactly what they want from Shami to strike in the power play, and allow the spinners some breathing space before they come into the game. That magic he produces from the length to get the ball to move off the seam, does not come easy, even for Shami. "It is a long procedure, a lot of hard work is required and then the results will come, " said Shami after the game. "I always concentrate on keeping the seam upright, so that off