Dale Steyn and Harshal Patel: 'Let's see them pull the ball, not put their foot down and bully you down the ground'

Alongside the yorker, the type of delivery that has the potential and power to surprise and literally floor the batter is the bouncer.

While the fast, climbing bouncer - like this Jasprit Bumrah rocket - can force a top- or leading edge while sending batters ducking and weaving out of harm's way, the slower variety can equally, but in different ways, lead to a dot ball or a wicket.

Though the power of the bouncer is potent in all cricket, in T20s bowlers have been allowed just one per over. That is going to change in the IPL from this season: the league has decided to allow bowlers two bouncers an over instead of the one that is the norm in T20 elsewhere, including in international T20 cricket.

What impact will that have on bowling plans, and on batters?

"It is a huge, huge advantage," Harshal Patel, who will turn up for Punjab Kings this IPL, says. "The biggest advantage is, you can bowl them at any point in an over - as opposed to [having to think of] when is the best, when we had just one bouncer an over.

"You can now go really hard early on: bowl a bouncer very first ball or second ball, then bowl a couple of length deliveries, then go defensive and close off the over. The more options you have, the better as a bowler.

"I can package my over better now."

More options for bowlers to sequence their overs
Generally in T20s, bowlers are known to follow a bouncer with a yorker. That is likely to change under the new allowance, according to former South Africa, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Royal Challengers Bangalore fast bowler Dale Steyn. Steyn was bowling coach at Sunrisers for the last two seasons (he opted out this year for personal reasons).

"A bouncer and a yorker go hand in a hand," he says. "If you get [the one] bouncer out of the way too early in the over, the next ball which immediately comes to your mind is the yorker, because now the batter knows you can't bowl a length ball and he is not expecting anything short. Everything is now going to be in his half.

"I know a lot of [batters] fear the yorker a little bit. But if you are bowling yorkers to batters like [MS] Dhoni, [Jos] Buttler, Surya [Yadav], they are able to access parts of the field where there is no fielder."

Against a bouncer, Steyn points out there are only limited pockets in a field the batter can hit to usually, as opposed to a yorker.

"If you are bowling a yorker, the ball can go anywhere. If you don't execute it well, Dhoni hits you for a six over long-on. You can bowl a perfect yorker and you can still get hit for a boundary over fine leg. Whereas with a bouncer, setting the field is much easier to control: you know the shot is potentially going to third man, deep square, fine leg. There are not many guys who can hit a bouncer over long-off or long-on - the percentages of that happening are extremely low."

Steyn agrees with Harshal that bowlers now have more options when planning an over.

"Now, instead of being under pressure to bowl multiple perfect yorkers, [or thinking] 'Do I bowl a wide or straight yorker?' you can walk back to the mark calmly and follow the first bouncer with even a back-of-a-length ball, which offers all three types of dismissal. You can keep the batter guessing about when the second bouncer is coming. Now? Or is it going to be another length ball?

"The two bouncers allows the fields to be kept simpler, the bowler's mind less clouded, which overall means his execution could be better."

Two bouncers: a weapon for attack or defence?
Harshal, the top wicket-taker in the 2021 IPL, fetched the highest bid for an Indian player at the auction ahead of the upcoming IPL season, when Punjab bought him for Rs 11.75 crore (US$1.41 million approximately). Over the years he has largely been used in the final ten-over segment, where his variety of slower balls, including a slower bouncer, have posed difficult questions for batters.

"[The bouncer] can be both [attacking and defensive] depending on what lines you bowl or what pace you deliver at. If you want to go slower into the pitch, sort of wide-ish outside the off stump, then it can be a very good defensive option against batters who generally tend to drag to the leg side.

"It can be also be an attacking option depending on whether you have the fine leg and square leg back and you bowl at the batter's head and force them to hook you or hit you over the boundary. In a T20 environment very few batters will try to keep it down and try to hit the gaps, most will try and hook you over the line. So that always allows you to force an error."

While the fast bouncer has shock appeal, the slower variety that Harshal relies on can be a nearly equal threat. He talks about the Eliminator in the 2022 season between Royal Challengers Bangalore [his previous IPL franchise] and Lucknow Super Giants, where slow offcutters dug into the pitch were his stock delivery and fetched him Marcus Stoinis' wicket at a crucial time in Super Giants' chase.

"Eden is a small ground, so I bowled wide slower bouncers to most of the specialist batters, including KL Rahul, Marcus Stoinis, Deepak Hooda. I had great success. [The other bowlers] were going ten an over while I was closing my overs for six or seven runs an over."

When and against whom will the two-bouncer rule be most effective?
Steyn believes bowlers will be best off using the new allowance mostly after the powerplay.

"Maybe after at least the first four overs. Because with only two fielders out in the powerplay, you have less chance of setting the field. You are also trying to utilise that new ball - trying to swing it, use the hard seam better. So one bouncer is really good in the powerplay to keep the batter guessing. A second bouncer might mean, if he gets any bat [on it], it could fly into the vacant area. Outside of field restrictions, though, you have a different game plan, you have more fielders to play with."

Steyn would like to see bowlers target attacking batters more.

"Anybody who is a power player. "[As a coach] you tend to tell bowlers, 'Guys, stay out of their strike zone.' Let's see them pull the ball, as opposed to put their front foot down the track and bully you back over long-on or long-off.

"Those kinds of batters knew they didn't need to pull or hook, and [they could] just duck the [one] bouncer previously. They could catch up with consecutive sixes to counter that one dot ball. But now two dot balls… it's a different story."

For Harshal, it is about attacking the new batter straight away.

"You need to be very good with line: you want to be somewhere around the left ear or left shoulder, because that is the blind spot and batters don't have control. Because when you try to hook and when the ball rushes on to you or comes a little slower, you end up gloving."

To his point about testing batters with the short ball, Steyn adds a caveat. "If you are bowling to Mitchell Marsh on a flat track in Delhi, the pace-on bouncer might not be the best option. Marsh grew up in Western Australia. I remember specifically a game in Delhi last year where Umran [Malik] tried doing that against Marsh and he didn't do it high enough and Marsh dominated him. But if he is bowling against somebody else who doesn't play the pull well, then I will suggest Umran bowl the bouncer more than once.

"If you are rushing a guy around nipple height and he is not looking to take on the pull, then you can get away with a full over by having the long-on and long-off up. It's really about making sure the bowler doesn't overdo the bouncer to the wrong batter - guys who are able to take it on."

Two bouncers, more thought about fields
Bowlers need to think about field placements themselves, Steyn says.

"It's going to be a more challenging field when you are going to force the batter to play more straight shots instead of just standing there and hacking. I want to see bowlers start thinking more as opposed to walking to the top of the mark and the captain telling them, 'This your field' and [the bowler goes] 'All right.' Over years and years of that they just stick to stock standard field settings. You see guys scoring 360 degrees around the park. We need a little bit more thinking. This [new rule] will allow them to tinker with their thinking now."

An example of a smart bowler of this sort, Steyn says, is an India and Mumbai Indians player who can bluff batters on any pitch across formats.

"If you are a [Jasprit] Bumrah, who delivers an extremely good yorker, he can even bluff by going yorker and knocking your poles off while retaining a field for the bouncer."

Steyn thinks the two-bouncer rule will not impact totals in games drastically. "You are still going to see teams scoring 180, 190, 200. It's not like teams are going to get all out for 120.

"It's going to be quite interesting how batters handle the bouncers. We are going to start to see a difference between how good some batters are versus how lucky some other batters sometimes get, where when they come in, they know that they are only going to get balls bowled in a particular area and they can score 30 off 20. We are going to see less of that."

In Test cricket a bowler has plenty of deliveries to set up a batter - a luxury not available in T20. Steyn believes the two-bouncers rule will change that.

"You probably got two balls in T20s to work a batter over previously. Now you could potentially get three to four balls."