The wide yorker has become a lazy death plan

Every bowler in the world has the same last-over plan now, which is precisely why batters have stopped fearing it.

Nineteenth over, batter set, twelve needed. The bowler comes in, angles across, aims for the wide yorker outside off with a deep point and a deep third. Everyone in the ground knows what is coming, including the batter, who has been practising it in the nets for six years.

That is the problem in one sentence. The plan is not bad. The plan is universal.

There was a time when the wide yorker was genuinely a wicket-taking option because batters were not equipped for it. Now the standard response is a pre-meditated move to the leg side and a scoop or a drag over the covers, and the shot is played with such regularity that it is not even improvisation any more, it is a technique with a coaching manual behind it. Meanwhile the delivery has a huge downside: miss by six inches and it is a wide, which in a tight finish is close to catastrophic.

The alternative that gets used far less than it should is the ball into the pitch, straight, aimed at the top of middle and off from a length around seven metres. Old-fashioned. Slightly ugly. Extremely hard to hit for six down the ground if the pace is off it, and if the batter has already moved leg side, he has opened himself up to being bowled behind his legs. The risk is that a well-timed pull goes for six over the shorter square boundary. Fine. That is one boundary option instead of five.

The other thing I would do more is bowl the surprise full and straight ball to a set batter early in the over rather than late. Everyone expects the yorker at the end. Almost nobody expects it first up, when they are still calculating.

Field setting is the part that decides all this and it gets treated as an afterthought. If you have a deep point and a deep third and a long off, you have committed to bowling wide and you have surrendered the leg side to a batter who is going to walk across. Set the field for what you actually want to bowl, and set it before you decide, not after.

Death bowling is not about having a perfect ball. It is about having two of them and hiding which one is coming. The wide yorker stopped being a secret a long time ago.