You could see Arshdeep Singh’s plan from the distance.
As India struggled to stop the onslaught of Jacob Bethell and Will Jacks — before delivered the game-changing over — Arshdeep tried another way to arrest the flow. Make the left-arm seamer bowl wide yorkers.
It’s a ploy that yielded results. And showed why it isn’t an easy skill to execute, whether there’s dew or not. First, the success part.
On a night where Bethell swung anything in the arc, Arshdeep was the first to make him reach for deliveries by bowling wide yorkers. After being hit for a boundary off the first ball of the 14th over, Arshdeep delivered eight balls — including three successive wides to Jacks — that all landed on yorker length or ended up as low full tosses.
For the first time that night, neither Bethell nor Jacks had a Plan B. Both have the switch-hits, the scoops, the jab. But against the wide yorkers, they either tried to put bat on ball for a single or two, or like Bethell did once, let it go harmlessly to the wicketkeeper.
Riding high on confidence, when Arshdeep returned for the 17th over, he sent four successive yorkers — including a wide — before bluffing with a bouncer. In the next two deliveries, Arshdeep couldn’t hit the wide-yorker radar. Bethell knocked off a six and a boundary.
Those two deliveries and the five wides he sent down showed why that line is the most challenging to execute. The margin between genius and four runs? Inches.
Fast bowling great Glenn McGrath says unless enough preparation goes behind the scenes, bowlers will struggle.
“It comes back to why do we bowl length balls really well? Because in the nets, that’s the majority of what we bowl. So we need to practise bowling those in the nets as well. And it comes down to confidence. If you’re confident with bowling wide yorkers, then you’re going to bowl and hit it more often,” McGrath told The .
According to McGrath, the wide yorker becomes easier to execute if the bowler has it as a Plan B in his subconscious mind — giving the batsman no signs of it coming.
“In T20 and one-day, especially at the death in pressure situations, you need a backup ball in your mind. You need to have already thought about where the batsman is trying to hit you and what ball I’m going to bowl. If he moves around the crease or looks to go down, do I have a backup ball? If I’ve thought about that at the top of my run, it’s easier to execute.
“If I’m running in to bowl with one ball in mind, and I see the batsman do something, I think, ‘Oh, I need to do that’ and deliver it wide. But it’s that split second that’s tougher. If we’ve already thought about it, our subconscious takes over.”
The difference between reacting and responding. One is instinct under pressure. The other is preparation meeting opportunity. On Thursday in those two overs, the wide yorker seemed to be in the back of Arshdeep’s mind. When Bethell tried to move, he even delivered two inswinging yorkers that landed right in the blockhole. Plan B became Plan A, and back again.
This particular length has tormented India before. Famously, in the 2014 T20 World Cup final against Sri Lanka.
The story goes: having seen India batsmen go deep in the crease and negotiate Lasith Malinga’s yorkers, Sri Lanka came up with the wide-yorker plan two days before the final in Dhaka. An excited Malinga took Nuwan Kulasekara aside and practiced that line so diligently that in the final, the two pacers conceded only 15 runs in the last three overs by delivering wide yorkers. It swung the game in Sri Lanka’s favor.
“When it comes to yorker length, room for error is a lot less,” McGrath says. “So as long as you put the work in and you’re confident being able to hit those lengths, you will. You’ve got to train the way you mean to play.”
McGrath pauses, then adds: “I wonder how many guys actually practise their wide yorkers as much as they practise their length balls. Even for the batsmen, they don’t face that enough in the nets.”
On Thursday night, Arshdeep showed both sides of that coin. Eight deliveries that made Bethell and Jacks reach. Five wides that showed the price of ambition. Two runs conceded that proved Plan B can work. And one reminder: the yorker that ends outside off-stump isn’t easier to bowl than the one that crashes into the base of middle. It’s harder. That’s why it works when it does.
