When I was a kid, a lot of the other kids I played cricket with bowled with Venkatesh Prasad's action, an action both idiosyncratic and robotic, and therefore ideal for a kid to copy and caricature. Except when I tried it, someone pointed out that I jump off the wrong foot.
Prasad's action went like this: an absolutely straight-line run-up, a towel flapping from the waistband of his trousers, and then, as he went into a side-on position, his arms would whirl in a motion that resembled a crankshaft and piston, at the end of which his left arm would drop downwards, and his right arm commence another rotation. As left elbow met hip, his right arm and left leg would form a line exactly perpendicular to the ground. At this point, he would release the ball, inevitably his stock delivery, the leg-cutter.
In the van that took me to school, the back rows discussed cricket. The joke that went around about India's bowling was - Venkatesh Prasad is a leg spinner wrongly labelled right-arm medium-fast, and Anil Kumble a medium pacer wrongly labelled legbreak googly.
Prasad's action went like this: an absolutely straight-line run-up, a towel flapping from the waistband of his trousers, and then, as he went into a side-on position, his arms would whirl in a motion that resembled a crankshaft and piston, at the end of which his left arm would drop downwards, and his right arm commence another rotation. As left elbow met hip, his right arm and left leg would form a line exactly perpendicular to the ground. At this point, he would release the ball, inevitably his stock delivery, the leg-cutter.
In the van that took me to school, the back rows discussed cricket. The joke that went around about India's bowling was - Venkatesh Prasad is a leg spinner wrongly labelled right-arm medium-fast, and Anil Kumble a medium pacer wrongly labelled legbreak googly.
