It's been a while since I've posted an article now. I am back now and I hope I can be a regular. Let's get back to the last part of the series where I talked about reverse swing. We came to know that how reverse swing was an art and mastered by only a few. Reverse swing needs pace and also the right condition of the ball. Today we'll be talking about another delivery that is still one of the hardest to hit, a Yorker.
So let's know how to bowl a perfect Yorker.
In this era where the game is all about batsmen, bowlers have to have some tricks up their sleeve. A fast bowler in today's era should be good at swinging the ball early on in the innings and capable of bowling good slower balls and bouncers and follow them up with a pin point Yorker. It's still one of the best balls for a bowler. A perfect Yorker is hard to score and there is a lot of chance of getting a wicket off that ball.
So how can a bowler master bowling a Yorker? The answer is simple, sheer practice! Only practicing bowling a Yorker in nets will help you bowl a Yorker in a match. It's no nonsense that legendary Wasim Akram used to practice bowling a Yorker for two hours, bowling hundreds of balls at one area. So the mantra is simple, practice practice and practice.
Now let's talk about the ways we can practice bowling a Yorker.
1. Imagine a batsman's stance at the batting crease and imagine his two feet at the crease. Place a pair of shoes at that position and go back to your bowling run up. Keep those shoes in your mind and run and try to aim at those. Bowl six balls at a time and see how many of those have hit the shoes. Try to increase the number of hits every round. Bowl at least a hundred balls everyday.
2. You can use wickets instead of boots as well. Place a wicket (or a pole) on a couple of bricks in front of the batting crease. Keep in mind that you don't have to hit the pole but escape it by bowling underneath the pole. That will be the perfect Yorker and try to do that 2 or 3 time at the beginning and increase the number of hits as you bowl more and more rounds. Keep in mind that you're progressing, if you're not improving you need to focus a lot more. It's all in the mind, prepare your mind and motivate it, that will push you to always get better.
Another tip is that you can use cross seam if you don't have enough control on the ball bowling seam up. Cross seam fits in better and helps bowl the exact length you want more often. If you're comfortable with cross seam you can use it. But keep in mind that it won't help the team when the ball is new, because of the roughness it will cause on the ball which will alleviate the swing a bowler might be extracting. So try the cross seam only when the ball is old enough.
Hope that these little tips will help you and remember there's only one way bowling perfect Yorkers i.e., perfect practice.
Make sure you watch the video where bowlers can be seen practicing bowling Yorkers :)
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