This morning, Star Cricket telecast the highlights of the 1996 World Cup group match between India and Sri Lanka at Ferozeshah Kotla – the match where Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharana destroyed Manoj Prabhakar’s international career.
I’ve never seen Manoj Prabhakar bowl well; although I must say that all I’ve seen of his bowling are highlights packages from India’s 1990 tour to England, and now this match. He bowled at about 67 miles per hour, and needed a run-up as long as Waqar Younis or Wes Hall to achieve this speed.
Usually, bowlers who clock 67 miles per hour are placid-looking chaps who, as the cliché goes, know their limitations and bowl stump-to-stump. Manoj Prabhakar instead looked like he wanted to splatter the innards of batsmen all over the sightscreen at the other end and imagined himself easily capable of doing so.
As everyone knows, Manoj Prabhakar ended this match, and his international career, bowling off spin.
Immediately after this match, Star Cricket played the highlights of Sachin Tendulkar's 177 at Trent Bridge a few months after the World Cup. It made me chuckle, because here was another 67mph trundler who seemed to believe himself the spiritual heir to Frank Tyson - Dominic Cork.
Sachin punched Cork off the backfoot repeatedly and clinically, down the ground, through the off side and on. When he got bored, he waited a little while longer and cut him off his stumps, or moved across and whipped him off his legs. Despite all this, Cork continued to run in every ball with the aggression and flared nostrils of a slightly deranged bull.
I’ve never seen Manoj Prabhakar bowl well; although I must say that all I’ve seen of his bowling are highlights packages from India’s 1990 tour to England, and now this match. He bowled at about 67 miles per hour, and needed a run-up as long as Waqar Younis or Wes Hall to achieve this speed.
Usually, bowlers who clock 67 miles per hour are placid-looking chaps who, as the cliché goes, know their limitations and bowl stump-to-stump. Manoj Prabhakar instead looked like he wanted to splatter the innards of batsmen all over the sightscreen at the other end and imagined himself easily capable of doing so.
As everyone knows, Manoj Prabhakar ended this match, and his international career, bowling off spin.
Immediately after this match, Star Cricket played the highlights of Sachin Tendulkar's 177 at Trent Bridge a few months after the World Cup. It made me chuckle, because here was another 67mph trundler who seemed to believe himself the spiritual heir to Frank Tyson - Dominic Cork.
Sachin punched Cork off the backfoot repeatedly and clinically, down the ground, through the off side and on. When he got bored, he waited a little while longer and cut him off his stumps, or moved across and whipped him off his legs. Despite all this, Cork continued to run in every ball with the aggression and flared nostrils of a slightly deranged bull.
