How Southee solved an inswinger problem

What inswinger problem?

As batsmen became more dominant in the game and bowlers needed to continually improve their skillsets, it became a prerequisite for bowlers at the international level to have the ability to move the ball both ways. Spinners developed the doosra and the carrom ball amongst methods to get more tactful, while pace bowlers relied more on swing and their wrist positions to get the ball to do their bidding. Around nine years ago, Tim Southee faced a dilemma: he had a very good outswinger, but the other one was proving difficult to execute. "I had played around for a long time to bowl the inswinger but wasn't able to do this. I watched the likes of James Anderson swinging it both ways, and tried to pick up ways to try and bowl it. And it got to a point where I was worried about losing my outswing," he told the ICC's YouTube channel.

So how did he then develop an inswinger?

He didn't. Instead, he found another way to create an incoming delivery without messing with his action or rhythm.

What was that?

The three-quarter seam ball.

How did that help?

The same way it helped Southee's former New Zealand teammate, Kyle Mills, who had perfected this delivery and later helped Southee to learn it."I taught myself," Mills tells Cricbuzz. "I couldn't swing the ball into the right-handed batsman; it was the skill I couldn't do. I needed to come up with an alternative to that.

"So I worked in the nets and practice games on the three-quarter seam ball. And after a lot of trial and error, I managed to pick out the ball to the left-hander that would pitch and go away from him. And also to the right-handed batsman to pitch and come into the batter. That gave me two styles of bowling - swing away from the right-hander and back to the leftie, and I used this three-quarter seam."

What is the method behind bowling the three-quarter seam ball?

Mills decodes the grip required to bowl the delivery. "People talk about cross-seam, where you hold the ball perpendicular to your fingers. But I had to have the seam almost on a 45- or 40-degree angle, and that is where I found the best opportunity to hit the seam and to make it move away from the left-hander. I'm not saying it would work for every bowler in the world, because every bowler is different, every bowler has a different wrist presentation, but for me, that ball worked. I worked with him (Southee) as well."

How did this help improve Southee's game?

"He (Southee) came into the group as a young fella, and part of the role of a senior bowler is to pass on to the young new guy," says Mills. "I tried to help him as much as I could, and this is one delivery he kind of learnt off me I guess."

To succeed in the longest format of the game, a bowler also needs to find ways to set the batsman up before delivering the coup de grace. By using the crease effectively, Southee ensured that he enhanced the effectiveness of his key skillsets - the outswinger and the three-quarter seam ball.

"To decrease the movement, you just come wider of the crease. But also coming from wider on the crease, the angle of the ball which is released from the bowler gives the perception that it is a lot closer to the wicket, so the batsmen are playing at a ball that they don't need to be playing because the angle makes you feel like the ball is a lot closer to them than it actually is. That is something that Tim has done exceptionally well over the last six or seven years," says Mills.

"I really enjoy sitting and watching him... using the angles and crease with such success. He is a much smarter bowler than when he first started, he may have lost a bit of pace, but he has got other attributes which make him very successful - good knowledge of the game, good knowledge of the opposition batters, good knowledge of when to use his skills... he has added a lot of variety."