Australia vs. India, First Test: Why is batting getting harder? Because bowlers are getting smarter

Opinion is divided among commentators about whether batting at the international level is getting harder but there is one change in a bowler’s bag of tricks, mastered by an England quick, which could in fact prove that true.

David Warner isn’t sure whether wickets have gotten more treacherous but he knows this, bowlers are getting smarter.

Debate is raging over claims from the likes of Steve Smith, Marnus Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja that Test match batting – and batting in general – is getting harder, with former greats including Mark Waugh and Ravi Shastri struggling to accept how that could be possible.

But Warner is adamant the answer isn’t so much in the pitches, but in the bag of tricks cunning bowlers have developed to exploit them.

Warner believes the bowlers are getting smarter as cricket evolves. Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

Warner says it’s the under the radar revolution of wobble seam bowling which is what’s added another layer of difficulty to making runs in Test match cricket.

The art of positioning your fingers at an angle over the seam and running them back down the back of the ball is a delivery pioneered largely by Englishman Stuart Broad which has really only taken hold across the world over the past five or six years.

When the delivery wobbles out of the hand in that way it has the potential to nip away from the outside edge or into the pads depending on which part of the seam hits the pitch – and bowlers and batsmen alike have no idea which way it will go. And that spells trouble.

After 17 wickets fell on day one of the first Test in Perth, Mitchell Starc bristled at the suggestion – so often peddled by batsmen – that the pitch was responsible.

“Bowlers are allowed to bowl good balls,” Starc retorted.

Starc had a quick retort to questions that the Perth Stadium pitch was responsible for the onslaught of day one wickets. Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

“When there’s a lot of runs, it’s like, ‘Oh, the bowlers bowled badly. When there’s wickets, the wickets are tough.’ But you are allowed to bowl good balls.”

And the invention of the wobble seam has armed the best fast bowlers with a weapon that allows them to send down more of those good balls than ever before.

The bowlologist himself, former Test pacer Damien Fleming admits it’s a “regret” of his that he was never adventurous enough to go against his instincts and try the wobble seam ball during his career.

“Why didn’t we do it?” Fleming pondered out loud out the back of the SEN commentary box after day one. Even the great Glenn McGrath has conceded he has only become aware of the wobble seam in recent years.

Now as a coach of young quicks, Fleming says he now teaches the wobble seam as a staple.

Former England bowler Stuart Broad was the master of the wobble seam. Picture: Stu Forster/Getty Images

Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood are masters of the delivery, also known as the scramble seam, and unfortunately for Australia’s batsmen, so are Indian demons Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj.

When young NSW under 19s quick Charlie Anderson was recently sent on a trip to Victoria for the sole purpose of learning from Cummins, Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc, it was lessons on the wobble seam which became his biggest takeaway from the experience.

Not only did the Australian trio show Anderson how they do it, but former Test seamer Jackson Bird and even Victorian opponents Scott Boland and Peter Siddle chimed in with their two cents worth as well.

NSW young gun Charlie Anderson had the ultimate lesson in modern-day bowling when he travelled to Victoria recently. Picture: Tom Parrish

In the past perhaps experienced bowlers would teach young bucks about bowling front or side on, polishing one side of the ball or pitching it up more than you think – but now the focus is all on the wobble seam, because it’s like kryptonite for batsmen.

The ingenuity of the wobble seam is it’s been born out of the desperation of bowlers to survive in a batter’s world.

Fast bowlers were the sacrificial lambs of T20 cricket, but through adversity has come resourcefulness.

For years bowlers were plagued by barren pitches in Australia and in English county cricket and the drop off in reverse swing across the international game since 2018 may have also led quicks to get more inventive.

The great guessing game invoked by the wobble seam becoming almost the stock ball for fast bowlers around the world is perhaps the most simple explanation for why batting has fallen off a cliff.