Review – Ian Pont :The Fast Bowler’s Bible. Crowood Press £12.99
Published 9th June 2006.
Spit and The Vulcan Grip.
Judging by the search strings for this site there’s a tremendous interest out there in the techniques and how tos of fast bowling. “How to bowl fast,” “biomechanics,” “reverse swing” are all terms that frequently crop up on the site-stats for Reverse Swing, all of them scoring a large amount of hits.
The problem is that published information on these newer developments in fast bowling has been either rare, sporadic or non-existent, so the publication of Ian Pont’s book “The Fast Bowler’s Bible” is indeed timely.
While the old MCC coaching manual always referred to “ sideways on” the new fast-bowling buzz-word is “biomechanics” and this is often bandied around when talking about the latest developments in the art. Ian Pont gives a much-needed simple explanation of biomechanics: it’s all to do with “improving the bowling action.”
In the chapter, “Fast Bowling Coaching Made Easy,” which is probably the most valuable one in the book, he breaks down the bowling action into its constituent parts from start to finish, explaining what happens in each one and the part it plays in fast bowling. This is the meaty must-read section of the text, where he starts with the run-up and moves on to “ The Gather,” through “Hang time” and “Front-arm Load up,” dealing with each successive element before finishing on the “Follow-up on the Ball.” It’s impressive stuff.
Normally these techniques are best demonstrated in a coaching session but here each one is explained very clearly with photographs and additional text, so you easily visualise what he is talking about. He is also successful on the background and context of the skills, in drawing attention to why you do it as well as how you do it. This is useful because it enables aspiring young quickies to reflect on what they currently do as well as offering some alternatives to try out by themselves.
For example, it’s been some time since I bowled but what I learned from this chapter was why I was always able to swing the ball away but could never do it at any pace. It was all to do with having a ‘closed’ front foot position relative to the back foot. OK this insight has come rather late in the day for me, but I was left feeling that I wanted to go down the nets and try out some alternatives. And this is the approach that is encouraged in the book – go out there, and experiment and see what works for you. The key thing is the desire to bowl fast and to get the action right, running and bowling in straight lines, rather than attempting to clone some ideal action. “Bowling should feel natural and work with the way the body wants to move. Why make it hard for yourself.”
Other chapters cover the ground on swing and seam bowling, with illustration of the different grips as well as explanation of the different lengths. There’s plenty too on the mysterious art of reverse swing, and Ian Pont rightly points out that it’s always been around but it was down to Sarfraz Nawaz and the other Pakistani bowlers to systematically exploit it and develop it. He’s also good on the unreliability of reverse swing, and the need for the team to pay proper attention to the ball, as well as including a description of the dry versus spit methods of inducing reverse.
With its chapters on training and prevention of injury, as well as the mental approach to fast bowling, the book does make a genuine attempt to be comprehensive and to live up to the word “Bible” in the title and it comes with endorsements from Ronnie Irani and Darren Gough, who have both been coached by Pont.
The only real criticism of the book is that I did find it took some time to get going, and to directly engage with the mechanics of fast bowling. There’s a foreword, an introduction, a how to use, and three chapters of text-heavy stuff before you get to the pay-off point of how to do it. Fewer words would have been better but you can easily skim-read until you get to the nuggets in Chapter 4.
Finally, another section that made me want to go down the nets to experiment was the one dealing with slower balls. In it he describes nine different kinds of slower ball. “The ‘Vulcan Grip” is Pont’s favourite, and it involves a firm wrist, and the ball held between the middle and ring fingers. It’s supposed to be to difficult to master but it promises the reward of a ball with hardly any pace and which looks very odd in flight. I can’t wait to try it out.
25/06/06
