The Outswinger: Cricket’s most potent weapon
By: Garfield Robinson
The fastball is the single most effective tool in baseball and is responsible for more strikeouts than any other in the pitcher’s armoury. In volleyball it’s the spike, that downward hit executed with power and might, designed to prevent any kind of adequate response from opponents.
The three-pointer is basketball’s prime scoring shot nowadays. Many teams live and die by it and it is no coincidence that the team with the most championship rings in recent years - Golden State Warriors - has Steph Curry as its star player, the man regarded as the greatest three-point shooter in history.
In tennis it’s the serve that most players build their game around, and it is the serve that is considered most potent weapon in tennis.
In cricket it’s the outswinger. “Keep bowling those outswingers, Fred, and you’ll be all right. That’s the one that gets the great batsmen out.” Fred was the great England fast bowler and one-time record holder for the most wicket in Tests - Fred Trueman. The person addressing him was former England batter Maurice Leyland.
Leyland’s observation that the outswinger was the most challenging delivery a batter could face - the one most likely to get the “great” ones out - was not without foundation. Caught is, by far, the most popular method of dismissal in Test cricket.
According to the Howstat website, catches to the wicketkeeper (17.25%) and in the field (41.78%) account for almost 60% of the game’s dismissals. Of the catches taken by outfielders it is a safe wager that a significant number are taken off edges to slips and gully fielders.
Add that to those caught by the keeper and we can conclude that catches off the outside edge are the most common type of dismissal in Test cricket. And since the delivery which most facilitates this mode of dismissal is the outswinger, we can reasonably assume that the outswinger is the most effective delivery in the game.
It’s not difficult to appreciate the potency of the delivery from the fast bowler that seeks the outside edge of the batter’s blade. The delivery that deviates the other way and hits the inside edge has a more difficult task getting the batter out because there are a few obstacles in play.
“The ball swinging away from the bat,” according to Nathan Leamon and Ben Jones in Hitting Against The Spin: How Cricket Really Works, “is more dangerous than the ball swinging into the bat because the batsman’s pads offer a second line of defence to being caught or bowled when the ball takes or beats the inside edge.”
Leamon and Jones also inform us that “the ball that goes straight averages 29 against all batsmen in our sample. The ball that swings from right to left (as the bowler looks at it) averages 25 with one degree of swing. 21 with two degrees of swing, before rising a little with more swing.
“In contrast, the ball that swings a little from left to right averages 31.4, slightly more than a straight ball, then falls to 24 degrees with two degrees of swing.”
As Leyland pronounced, the outswinger is particularly useful in capturing top order wickets with the new ball. Jimmy Anderson has taken 708 Test wickets, more than any other fast bowler in the game’s history. In his autobiography - Bowl. Sleep. Repeat. - he tells us that “my stock delivery is an outswinger. I’m looking to swing the ball, as late as possible, away from the right-handed batsman.
“The later it moves the better chance of the batsman misjudging the ball and playing down a slightly wrong line. I’m trying to get batsmen out caught behind in general, either by the wicketkeeper or in the slips or from leading edges into the off-side if they are playing more expansively.
“The outswinger is the ball I’ve relied on the most to take those early innings wickets, but it also becomes the foil that every other ball is a variation and deception on.”
A decade or so ago a revolution in cricket was set in motion when a number of right-handed fast bowlers decided to attack left-handed batters from round the wicket. The left hander had a distinct advantage when facing the right-hand fast bowler, partially because most pacers, as we said, move the new ball away from the right-handed batter.
The left hander, up till then, mostly avoided the challenge that delivery posed because the ball from the right-hander is normally slanted across them. This means that left-handed batters hardly had to contend with the outswinger. But by going round the wicket the bowler is largely mimicking the right-hander bowling to the right-handed batter, in that they will often angle the ball in before shifting it away.
Bowlers like Stuart Broad and Kemar Roach profited enormously from this new tactic. The 2019 Ashes series, for example, saw Broad snatching David Warner’s wicket six times in eight innings. Previously, it was Warner who lorded over the pacer. Before the series, the batsman averaged over 65 against Broad. During the tour he reached double figures only once. That was, therefore, a new situation, a marked turnaround.
Left-handers had an easier ride for a long time. That good fortune was only halted when they were made to face more outswing. “God gave me the outswinger,” said Kapil Dev, the legendary India allrounder and one-time record holder for most Test wickets. “I had to develop the rest.”
Dale Steyn’s apparently got that gift as well. “Did you at any stage worry about losing your outswinger?” the South African was asked in an interview with The Cricket Monthly. “No, never,” he replied. “That is the biggest thing I have got: my away-swinger. Hopefully, it never goes. I don’t think about fast bowling a lot. I just do it.”
Steyn took 439 wickets from 93 Tests with an average of 22.95 and striking at 42.39. Of the bowlers with 200 Test wickets or more, only Glenn McGrath, Richard Hadlee, Curtly Ambrose, Malcolm Marshall, Imran Khan, Allan Donald, Fred Trueman, Pat Cummins, Joel Garner, Vernon Philander and Kagiso Rabada have slightly lower averages.
Of that group only Rabada’s strike rate of 39.53 is lower that Steyn’s. Simply put, Steyn could arguably be, in the words of Trueman, referring to himself, “the finest fast bowler who ever drew breath.”
At his best, Steyn had an outswinger from hell. It didn’t veer a great deal. It swerved enough, however, to find the edge or to make batters thank their lucky stars that they missed it.
Outfitted with a new ball, and bowling to a righthander, Steyn could be darn near unplayable. It mattered not one jot if it were Tendulkar or Dravid or Ponting at the receiving end. They’d be aware they were in for a trying time, and that it’d require a sizeable portion of good fortune to survive.
The unfortunate batter knew what was coming: the ball would be fairly full; would mostly be lined on or about off-stump; and would curve away apparently very late in its flight. But knowing what was coming was one thing; playing it was quite another.
The length and direction were demanding on their own. The deviation often made playing it quite impossible.
Former Indian swing bowling master, Zaheer Khan recalled, on Cricbuzz Live, a conversation he had with Steyn. “Imagine you bowling just outswingers, can you just work out inswinger as well?”
Steyn unexpectedly replied that “he doesn’t have to because he wanted to protect the shape of his outswinger and he felt that if he works on his wrist position and somehow loses his outswing, then all the sting in his bowling is gonna go away.”
Steyn’s response was instructive. What he was saying was that he knew his outswinger was an invaluable asset and would do nothing to jeopardize its efficacy.
There have been some remarkable spells of outswing bowling that have embedded themselves in the memory. One was Matthew Hoggard’s spell against South Africa in the fourth Test at Johannesburg during their 2015 visit.
The England fast bowler often conjured up a devilish outswinger and in that game he put on a masterclass on the last day to bowl England to a stunning victory capturing 7/61 after snapping up 5/144 in the first innings.
The parabolic curve that all swinging deliveries make, according to former NASA scientist and aerodynamics expert Rabi Mehta, was beautiful to witness but problematic for the batters to negotiate.
It was a great exhibition. So too was West Indian pacer Franklyn Rose’s 7/84 vs South Africa in the third Test in Durban during the 1998-99 series. The hosts won the game comfortably, but Rose showed everyone what a force he could be if he could find his outswinger consistently. He bowled beautifully that second day.
There was one memorable delivery to mark Boucher: it touched down on a good length on or around middle and off stumps, only to shift past his defensive prod and uproot his off stump.
“It was,” Rose said afterwards, “the best ball of my career.” “There is simply no better ball to bowl at a new batsman,” wrote the late Bob Woolmer in Art and Science of Cricket, “than a fast outswinging yorker, or perhaps an outswinging half-volley on off-stump. This is a delivery that should be mastered by any bowler who wants to succeed in the game.”
And yet, as the cricket ecosystem changes and Test cricket fades while the game’s briefest format surges to the fore, we should probably expect to see less outswing bowling. As we have discussed, the outswinger is a wicket-taking delivery, and wickets are not as important in the T20 game where the main aim is limiting run scoring.
Furthermore, the bowler hoping to graze the outside edge of the bat will normally want to give the ball time to do its business by pitching it up.
Yet the pitched-up delivery is risky and is often smashed in the shortened game if it does nothing out of the ordinary. The outswinger, therefore, will likely not be the focus of opening bowlers, which means that its future as cricket’s most valuable delivery is uncertain.
Its demise will be sad for this great game.