Colin Croft, Trinidad, February 1981 © Getty Images

What special challenges do tall fast bowlers present to batsmen?

Let us assume that the guy is tall, say about 6’ 4-5”. Then, in the old days at least, he could well have been delivering the ball from over the top of the sightscreen, since, with the extension of his arm in delivery the ball would be coming at the batsman from a height of about 10 feet. That’s not too much of a problem with the newer sightscreens.
Also, the height of the bowler has a direct impact on the assumption of the batsman as to where the ball will pitch. Let us assume that the bowler is Joel Garner, 6’ 9” tall, and he delivers from a height of over 10’. It would be very difficult to ascertain, in about 0.33 seconds, the exact trajectory of the ball. I have actually seen Garner hit many toes and ankles, and get positive lbw decisions, with yorkers that batsmen miscalculated as good-length, or even shortish deliveries. Coming from a greater height, the ball has a much deeper angle of incidence to the pitch. A shorter bowler has to have a shallower angle of incidence if he wants to bowl a ball that has the same landing point as that of the taller bowler, and, in a way, the batsman would be much more comfortable facing the shorter bowler.

What is the ideal surface for a tall fast bowler?

Tall fast bowlers prefer a surface that doesn’t give too much bounce because if there is bounce, good batsmen can let the ball go on height even though it is straight. They will play length and not direction. So sometimes too much bounce is not great, especially with a batsman who is not aggressive.

There has been the odd exception, but by and large the tallest fast bowlers (Bruce Reid, Garner, Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Steve Harmison) have not been as fast as the fastest in the world (Jeff Thomson, Michael Holding, Brett Lee, Shoaib Akhtar). Any reason?

I don’t agree. During my bowling days we had analog testing to clock the bowling speeds and I was 97mph when someone like Jeff Thomson was clocking 101mph. Yes, the very, very tall guys like Joel Garner were bowling at 90-92mph. But Joel’s forte was not bowling fast; he would concentrate on getting the ball to deviate. The yorker was his best ball. And even someone like Ambrose was in the 90s, which is not that slow. I don’t see height as having an effect on bowling fast.

Your style of bowling generally took you wide of the crease, and the angle posed a lot of problems. Is that something you’d recommend to tall fast bowlers, spearing it into the body from wide?

I’ll recommend to any fast bowler that he do what he is comfortable with. You do what comes naturally and then you fine tune. What I did was, I angled the ball in and then moved it away towards the slip. Now if you get that right you should get wickets every time.

On spinner’s tracks, is it generally preferable for a paceman to bowl on the first morning or when the pitch is crumbling?

The fast bowlers can bowl anytime. When the wicket is spinning, the top surface is a little loose and the ball can stop a bit, so you’ve got to use cutters, and you’ve got to dig the ball a little harder into the wicket to get them working effectively.

Can the bouncer be effective on such pitches or is it a waste of time?

A bouncer on such wickets can be very effective because the batsman cannot normally go under the ball. People with bad technique will struggle on such wickets. It all depends on how you set the batsman up: you’ve got to make the batsman come on to the front foot, which he will, to try and negate the leg-before. Then you set him up for the bouncer.

Who is the best fast bowler you’ve seen on slow pitches?

Wasim and Waqar. Their pace and mastery of reverse swing were amazing. At their peak they could do anything with the ball. They understood how to bowl on slow surfaces and they bowled with a lot of interest and heart.