Cricket Bowler
November 6th, 2008
There are quite a few types of bowlers and most teams will have a variety available in the team to take advantage of pitch or weather conditions or known weaknesses of the opposition.
A fast bowler is usually the mainstay of a team's attack. They will take a long run up before bowling each ball to build momentum and rhythm and can deliver the cricket ball at speeds up to 160 km/h (100 mph) with Shoaib Akhtar of Pakistan being the first to reach this goal, though his pace along with colleague Mohammed Asif's was both questioned, after it was discovered they had both taken the banned substance Nandralone, a steriod which enhances performance. It is widely considered that the pace either can bowl at was not genuine.
A medium pace bowler bowls somewhat more slowly and will often have some other weapon in their bowling arsenal rather than relying on speed. This might take the form of being able to swing the ball in the air or disguise the speed or length of his or her delivery to fool the batsman. Some medium pacers are simply accurate; they can repeatedly deliver the ball to a place which forces the batsman to defend rather than scoring runs.
A spin bowler usually bowls quite slowly, but his main target is to spin the ball as much as he can, forcing the batsman to treat each ball carefully. Generally spin bowlers give up the most runs but they all have "tricks" that they use to fool the batsman and get him or her out (such as the arm ball, googly, flipper, topspinner or doosra). Spin bowling is very much about deceit rather than speed. A fast Off Spin is the normal off spin action but with more pace. Off spin is when the cricket ball spins towards a right handed batsmen's bat. With more pace, there usually is less turn (amount of spin). The grip for spin is the three middle fingers on you hand wrapped around the ball's side (end fingers just touching seam). Off-spin is also referred to as Off-Break or Finger Spin.
