Relentless accuracy is not the same as a plan

We have raised a generation of bowlers who never miss and never threaten, and consistency has become an excuse.

There is a certain kind of bowling figure that looks respectable and tells you nothing good. Fourteen overs, three maidens, thirty-one runs, no wicket. Everyone nods. He bowled well. Bad luck.

He did not bowl well. He bowled the same ball fourteen times and a competent batter left it or blocked it fourteen times, which is exactly what a competent batter is supposed to do.

The corridor got fetishised somewhere along the line. Fourth stump, back of a length, hit the deck, wait for the mistake. It works beautifully in conditions where the ball moves, because the batter has to play at a decent proportion of them and the movement does the rest. In conditions where the ball does not move it is a way of politely running down the overs while the opposition builds a platform, and I have watched entire days where three seamers took turns doing it and looked baffled at tea.

Wickets come from making a batter unsure of his length. That is nearly the whole thing. Everything else, the swing, the seam, the angle, is a way of getting there. A bowler who lands six identical deliveries has told the batter everything he needs to know by the third one, and after that he is playing off the pitch rather than off the bowler.

So the question I want asked more is not how many balls landed in the good area. It is how many different lengths a bowler bowled on purpose, and whether the batter's front foot was ever wrong. Bouncer, then full and straight two balls later. A ball a foot fuller with a slightly different wrist position. Coming around the wicket to a right-hander for one over just to change the angle of the same length.

The counterpoint that keeps consistency in fashion is economy, and in white ball cricket that is a legitimate defence. Fine. But in a Test match, a bowler whose only asset is not going for runs is a defensive resource being used in an attacking role, and captains keep giving him the new ball because the figures look tidy.

Accuracy is the entry requirement. It is not the skill. Somewhere in the last twenty years we started confusing the two, and the wicket columns show it.