"Fast bowling is a bloody affair and the fast bowler is like the slaughter man in the abattoir" - Duncan Hamilton
Jeff Thompson and Michael Holding going for the throat of the batsman!
"Over the years, I've hit a lot of people with the ball. More often than once, I thought I had actually killed a man, and that always turned me sick to the stomach. But I never let it show, or the Trueman image would have collapsed for ever. If you are labelled a bastard, you have to keep it up." - Fred Trueman
Hamilton wrote in his wonderful biography on Harold Larwood, "A few overs of Larwood at his fastest were like a public stoning. He would frighten batsman out. It might look like exaggeration - but only a slight one - to say that Larwood could turn a stump to sawdust. When Larwood bowled, the ground staff always made sure there were three sets of spare stumps: Larwood was certain to break, splinter or shave at least one one of them, possibly two. He could turn a batsman to pulp too."
The three Indian bowlers need such an attitude today in the first half an hour - match would finish either way by then. The final hour of this great series which is fiercely fought over a month and half, needs such an effort from the three Indian fast bowlers - a burst of few overs going for the jugular of the remaining four English batters to earn a well deserved 2-2
Forget about heavy rollers, forget about the sun beating down the strip, forget about the fading colour of the grass, just steam in as if this is the last hour in your life, steam-in from your bowling mark like a hurricane and hurl that red cherry at the batsman - crushing his toes and if it misses the toes, pulverising the stumps! No half measures! Make 35 look like 350!
Come on India! Finish'em off! Proverbially, it boils down to just three to four deliveries ...!
