Angry Young Man - Fast bowler Stuart Broad loses his cool
Recently during the second test match between England and Pakistan, Stuart Broad went a little crazy, and after getting seriously frustrated threw the ball at Zulqarnain Haider, and hit him on the shoulder. It seems the heat of the moment got to the English bowler and he took out his frustrations on the Pakistani batsman. This has happened numerous times before, and it seems that fast bowlers have a trait that allows them to bowl so fast; they get angry most of the times. Frustration creeps in all the time in cricket but the professional athlete has to learn to control the build up and channel it into producing a match-winning performance.
It seems to be that a lot of fast bowlers that have passed through the game of cricket have been very angry individuals; instances include Waqar Younis, Curtly Ambrose, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Wasim-Akram-c96292, Brett Lee, and many others that had fiery streaks in them. This allows them to throw a ball at such high speeds that the batsmen that face them have no idea what is going on. This anger is what got the better of Stuart Broad when he was bowling to Zulqarnain Haider in England and Pakistan’s second test match in Birmingham. The defiant Haider had escaped a few chances at getting out and it was slowly starting to frustrate Broad. Whatever Broad tried to do to get Haider out, it was not working. In the end he got so angry that he threw the ball at the batsmen angrily and hit him on the shoulder. Broad was subsequently fined half his match fee, and admitted his guilt over the incident so it stopped a full inquiry being held into the matter.
An incident took place recently involving http://www.senore.com/Cricket/A-Young-c41367 man, and he is still maturing as a cricketer so hopefully these little incidents will be ironed out by the coach and management of the Pakistani team in a few years. This incident shows us that fast bowlers are an angry bunch, and the adrenaline that gets released when they bowl can sometimes overpower their emotions and make them do silly things.
In an interview with the legendary fast bowler, Dennis Lillee, he was asked what it takes to make a good fast bowler. His response was that a fast bowler has to have a number of factors in him that will make him successful in the field. A fast bowler has to be physically strong, their fitness has to be top notch, they have to have a high level of aggression when they bowl, they have to be mentally strong to play a chess game with the batsman, and also they have to have a fair amount of anger in them. In the bygone days of cricket, a fast bowler was looked at only as a brute of a player that charged down the pitch full of anger and venom and threw the ball as hard as he could. But over-time that image has changed; a bowler today is a thinker and a strategist who is trying to outmanoeuvre his opponent. The only thing that has been retained from those olden days is the anger while bowling. It seems the anger leads to them outthinking the man standing at the crease.
Hopefully the anger will stay to the extent that it is only reflected in the bowling speed of a fast bowler, and we do not see incidents of inappropriate throwing or elbowing as we have seen recently. These types of incidents mar the game and give fast bowlers a bad name. They go from being heroes to being villains. It’s high time that bowlers plan their every move while and beat their opponents strategically and not physically.
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