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Mohammed Shami: Good length, great results

I always concentrate on keeping the seam upright, so that off the pitch it can cut: Shami
I always concentrate on keeping the seam upright, so that off the pitch it can cut: Shami ©Getty

A 'good length' in today's cricket is a thing of uncertainty. Not to batsmen as it used to be, but to the bowlers. It can turn a bowler into a menace or a novice because batsmen practicing range-hitting find it easy to line-up length balls. There are few as good at it as those from the Caribbean. But, with a little bit of nip or some extra bounce from the surface, this batsmen-bowler dynamic can revert to the traditional.

All it requires is a little patch of grass in the right position, or sometimes even a foot-mark or a crack. Little else about fast bowling is as intricately dependent on the nature of the pitch as a ball on a good length. Not the yorker obviously, and not even the bouncer which requires more from the body than the turf. This zone was best exploited by the likes of Glenn McGrath, Vernon Philander, Ryan Harris in the past. You can add

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