IPL 2020: Slow pitches and yorkers in T20 cricket

You can never keep the two Ws out of your head when you think of the yorkers. If you are a 90s kid, you know what I mean. Nobody bowled the yorkers more ruthlessly than Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram.

The two Pakistani legends made the best batsmen of their time fear for the safety of their toes. The batsmen in the last decade of the 20th century were not so worried about being hit on their heads. For, bouncer was a weapon Wasim and Waqar rarely used.

Not that they couldn't bowl them.

But it was the yorkers that did the job for them. Delivered at terrifying pace, their yorkers kept rattling the stumps and when the two masters got the ball to reverse, they were simply unplayable.

Now more than 16 years after Wasim and Waqar's retirement, one wonders how they would have used their yorkers in the death overs of a T20 game - something Lasith Malinga has done so very well in the last 10 years.

Imagine the two Ws, armed with the greatest yorkers in history, in a gladiatorial T20 battle against AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle!

Since we are on the subject, Shane Bond, the supreme Kiwi fast bowler whose career was cut short by injuries, offered us an insight into the reluctance of the quick bowlers to use the yorkers in this IPL.

Bond says it's the slowness of the pitches and the big boundaries (in Dubai and Abu Dhabi) that have allowed the bowlers to try the length ball and the slow bouncer.

"So you could argue that the length ball or slow bouncer is harder to hit for six rather than players taking the pitch out of play, missing the yorkers and getting hit back over your head. But it's not a ball (yorker) that's been ruled out for us," the Mumbai Indians bowling coach said.

Jasprit Bumrah, the finest exponent of the yorker now, tried and failed to get it on target against De Villiers in the game between the Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore.

But it was in the Super Over of that cliffhanger that Bumrah got his mojo back as he tested De Villiers with his trademark yorkers.

With only seven runs to defend, Bumrah still managed to push the South African batting genius to his limits.

Perhaps, the result would have been completely different if Bumrah had a bigger Super Over total to defend.

Now as the tournament progresses, it's difficult to predict if we will see the yorkers, which according to Bond, 'are one of the mini balls that a fast bowler has in his armoury'.

But what's not difficult to imagine is that the slow pitches and the bigger boundaries would have mattered little to the two Ws who used the 'mini balls' to inflict maximum damage on the batsmen.