Boxing Day in 2010 has been a fine, albeit exacting day for fast bowling. In this post I look at the pitch maps for Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, James Anderson, Chris Tremlett, Tim Bresnan, Ben Hilfenhaus, Peter Siddle, Ryan Harris and Mitchell Johnson.
Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel bowled very different spells on Day 1 at Durban. There are 4 images in the flickr set below. They are taken from Cricinfo's scorecard and hawkeye record. They show the pitch map and beehive placement for Steyn and Morkel. Morkel looked dramatic and had to be played carefully, but went wicketless. Steyn on the other hand took 4 cheap wickets. Morkel did not attack the stumps, was generally quite short (around the 8 meter mark, well outside offstump), while Steyn was fuller (around the six meter mark, much closer to off stump). Steyn bowled two distinct lengths which are discernible in both pitch map and beehive and attacked the stumps more. Whats more, in Steyn's case, many of the deliveries that pitched marginally outside off stump had to be played at, because they were headed towards off stump. In Morkel's case, because he doesn't swing the ball, he had to pitch wider outside off stump.
Steyn shows the classic pitchmap of the attacking bowler in fast bowler friendly conditions - the boundary balls and the wicket balls are very close together, with the wicket balls just a few inches shorter than the boundary balls.
You could call Morkel the perfect foil to Steyn, but it's debatable whether Steyn required a foil, and whether South Africa should have had a more attacking bowler than Morkel at the other end. Last year they played Friedel de Wet, a bowler in the Steyn mould, but not as good.
Both Steyn and Morkel have tremendous control, something that we will find lacking when Ishant Sharma and S Sreesanth bowler. Zaheer Khan is likely to be closer to Steyn and Morkel in terms of control. It will be instructive to compare Zaheer's pitch map and beehive to Tsotsobe's. Tsotsobe's pitch map is far messier than that of his two Protean colleagues.
James Anderson was the most accurate bowler on show at the MCG on Boxing Day. Chris Tremlett was the most impressive in my view. I have included Tremlett's pitch map from Perth, and the adjustment he made to his length at Melbourne is quite stunning. The major difference between the English and Australian bowling attacks, is that England seem more disciplined, and by that I mean, they seem surer about what they are trying to accomplish. Bresnan is slightly shorter in length than Anderson - a holding bowler. Australia's bowlers have struggled to bowl at England's left handed opening pair. None of the Australian bowlers are able to attack the left hander's stumps. It doesn't help that Johnson is as erratic as he is.
The pitchmaps from the MCG suggest that James Anderson was allowed to take wickets without really attacking the stumps that much, unlike Steyn, who attacked the stumps much more. Anderson got away with bowling quite straight, and here Andrew Strauss deserves plenty of credit for knowing exactly what his bowlers do. England in general have looked extremely organized in the field, and Australia have not had the patience to wear them down.
Hawkeye is useful for this kind of thing, and as such is a fine aid to commentary. I invite you to study the pitch maps in the slideshow above and contribute your observations.