Is a wide yorker the new knuckle ball?

It’s fun to watch Rishabh Pant get up from the ground. Who can forget that backflip he did as a Test newbie, a clip that went viral? And he’s got other moves too, like we saw on Tuesday night, while he batted against Royal Challengers Bangalore. As Kyle Jamieson steamed in from over the wicket, Pant jumped outside off, trying to scoop over fine leg. Jamieson got the yorker right, Pant got the toe end of the bat and fell to the ground. Of course, he quickly rolled over and completed possibly the most acrobatic single we will see this IPL. 

The point here is not Pant though. Or Kyle Jamieson. The point is the ball that defeated one of the best batters around and in the form of his life. 

And it wasn’t just him. The over before, Jamieson used the exact same tactic against the other batter on strike, Shimron Hetmyer. From over the wicket to the two left handers, Jamieson speared the ball across, looking for the corner where the wide line meets the popping crease. Two out of six balls, he found it. The other four were full tosses of varying heights. But five out of six balls were bowled outside off stump, and were hit to fielders on the offside. According to the plan. 

With two elite T20 hitters at the crease, and despite getting only two of his six balls exactly where he wanted them, Jamieson conceded just five runs off the over. In a game that was won by one run off the last ball, it was a massive heist. 

It’s a tactic that I’ve been tracking since the start of the IPL, when Arshdeep Singh slanted one across Sanju Samson to have the centurion caught at cover, giving Punjab Kings a last gasp win. Cricket.com’s database allowed me to dig a little deeper, to see if teams are using this tactic more often. Here’s what we found:

In the 2019 edition of the IPL, right arm pace bowlers bowled 64 wide yorkers to right handed batters. This is the traditional wide yorker. In 2020, that number rose to 118. An 84% increase. 

Even more interestingly, the 2019 edition saw 28 wide yorkers bowled by bowlers to batters of opposite styles. That is, right arm pace bowlers bowling to left handed batters, and left arm pace bowlers bowling to right handed batters. That number jumped to 95 in 2020. A 239% increase. 

Even accounting for the fact that not all these balls would have been bowled over the wicket, the trend is unmissable. Slanting the ball across the batter, going for the wide yorker, is a tactic that is gaining popularity. We’ve seen it work this year: remember Andre Russell going around the wicket and bowling wide yorkers to the right hander? 

So why is the wide yorker an option that teams are increasingly opting for? 

Everyone knows that batters have become more proficient at hitting a yorker that is bowled at them, thus making the margin for error on the traditional yorker miniscule. Let’s look at why this is from a crude biomechanical point of view. 

When batters sets up to hit a ball, they give themselves a wide base, often by clearing the front leg. A stable base allows them to add more power into the shot. Try standing with your feet together and throwing a punch. Now spread your feet apart, and punch again. 

A wide base also means a low centre of gravity. Now when a yorker is bowled at the batter, this low centre of gravity aids them in keeping still, drawing power from the wide base, and manipulating a ball that is pitched close to them, since the point of contact is fairly close to the body’s centre of gravity. Think about bowling -the nine pin, alleys and gutters kind. We can control a very heavy ball because we stay low and keep it close to our body as we swing our arm. Same principle.

A wide yorker disrupts this stability. By bowling the ball close to the wide line, the bowler tries to keep the contact point as far from the batter as possible. The batter’s wide base gives them stability, but more stability means less mobility. Even if they can reach the ball, it’s harder to generate power the farther you go from your base. Try those punches again, with a good wide stance. Punch something close to you, and then punch something that’s at the edge of your reach. Feel the difference? 

So the wide yorker becomes a potent weapon against batters who are master hitters of the traditional yorker. I vaguely remember an ODI series India played in New Zealand. MS Dhoni was at the height of his prowess, not just negating yorkers, but scoring heavily off them, with those weaponised forearms of his. Kyle Mills went around the wicket and bowled wide yorkers to him. Mills is now bowling coach at Kolkata Knight Riders, and his blueprint is all over Russell’s tactics. 

The wide yorker also allows the captain to revert to one of the oldest tricks in the book: one sided field. Look at the field Jamieson had to Pant and Hetmyer. Third man, point inside the circle, deep cover, extra cover inside the circle, and a wide-ish long off. On the leg side: long on, deep midwicket, and then short fine leg and backward square leg in the circle. The idea is to take one slice of the pie out of the equation. If a batter wants to scoop over short fine, they have to defeat not only the line but also the angle going across them. We saw how even one of the best at the lap shot, Rishabh Pant, was challenged. It was a wide yorker that Mohammed Siraj chose as his last ball while defending six as it is the most difficult ball to hit out of the park. This season, we have seen AB de Villiers and Russell score heavily against wide yorkers, but then these two are outliers in their own right.

Of course, there are downsides. This field makes the bowling predictable, and batters will jump across to access the leg side, like Hetmyer did yesterday. Too little width, and the wide base allows the batters a sweet swing, like we see from golfers (and de Villiers). But the data suggests that this is a tactic worth persevering with. In 2020, wide yorkers from right arm pacers to left handed batters yielded only 49 runs off 57 balls, a SR of just 86. Wide yorkers by all types of bowlers to all types of batters went at a SR of just 90 last IPL. 

The tussle between bowlers and batters in cricket continues to ebb and flow. I’m keen to run the numbers at the end of this IPL season, to see if the wide yorker is the new knuckle ball.