Ottis Gibson, England’s recently employed fast bowling coach, is confident Steve Harmison can return to his top form and rediscover his “Curtly Ambrose” best. Speaking to Derek Pringle in the Sunday Telegraph, Gibson – “widely credited with helping England's bowlers find success in the recent one-day series in Sri Lanka” – offers his thoughts on his new role and how England can take 20 Sri Lankan wickets on dead pitches.
"When pitches are dead, one of the things I want bowlers to do is bowl within themselves. If their top speed is 87?mph I want them to be bowling at 82?mph, but consistently. They can then either go up to their maximum or drop down to 72?mph with a slower ball, which offers them three levels of variation."
Over at The Sunday Times, Simon Wilde forgets the “soulless mechanics” of how Muttiah Muralitharan bowls and instead concentrates on the Sri Lankan’s character.
His genius is his Darwinian adaptability. When a coach told him he was too small to bowl fast, the 13-year-old switched to off-spin. Under fire from Aussie officialdom, he turned to leg-spin. When a string of left-hand-ers began to thwart him, he turned the tables by perfecting his doosra. More recently he has added a slider. And he has developed astonishing stamina, averaging 331 balls per Test (Warne, no slouch himself, averaged 281).
By his own admission, the chase for the world record has maintained his passion through the past three years and it will be interesting to see how long he keeps going once he has planted his pole on cricket’s Everest. But he’ll want to put it out of anyone else’s reach. “I have my achievements and fame,” Murali once said. “Money can’t buy how that makes me feel.”
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