The Greatest Deliveries I Have Seen in test Cricket

There is something almost unfair about judging a bowler by a single delivery.

Fast bowling is constructed over spells. Spin bowling is constructed through deception accumulated ball after ball. Test cricket, more than any other form of the game, rewards repetition: the fourth-stump line maintained for an hour, the sequence of outswingers that makes the batsman forget about the one coming back, the leg-breaks that slowly persuade a batsman to plant his front foot where the bowler wants it.

And yet there are balls that somehow become bigger than the spells containing them.

They survive after scorecards have faded from memory.

We remember the stump cartwheeling. The batsman's head turning backwards. The wicketkeeper beginning his celebration while the victim is still trying to understand the physics of what has happened.

Sometimes the greatness lies in movement. Sometimes pace. Sometimes deception. Sometimes the delivery is merely the final sentence of an argument that has taken an entire over or several overs—to construct.

The following twenty are not necessarily the twenty most important wickets in Test history. Nor are they ranked simply by how far the ball swung or spun.

They are twenty deliveries—or, in several cases, sequences culminating in one—that represent bowling approaching its theoretical limit.

1. Shoaib Akhtar to Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar

Kolkata, 1999 - Two Balls, Two Masters, One Explosion

Before Shoaib Akhtar became an international celebrity, before the speed records and controversies, there was Eden Gardens. Pakistan had been dismissed for 185 in the inaugural Asian Test Championship match. India appeared to be taking control. Rahul Dravid was established on 24. Sadagopan Ramesh was progressing smoothly.

Then came Shoaib.

Immediately after the drink’s interval, he charged in to Dravid.

The ball was full, violently fast and swinging inward. Dravid, perhaps the most technically organised young batsman in world cricket, attempted to bring his bat down.

He was late.

The yorker crashed through and sent the leg stump flying.

India 147 for three.

Now Sachin Tendulkar walked out.

Eden Gardens was waiting for its hero. Tendulkar was already the most revered batsman in India and one of the finest in the world.

Shoaib stopped during his run-up once, returned to his mark, and came again.

Another thunderbolt.

Full. Fast. Late movement.

Tendulkar barely had time to organise himself. His middle stump cartwheeled.

Golden duck.

India 147 for four.

The archived ball-by-ball record confirms the extraordinary sequence: Dravid bowled at 50.1 and Tendulkar bowled at 50.2. Contemporary reports attributed both dismissals above all to Shoaib's sheer pace. What makes the Tendulkar delivery extraordinary is not extravagant swing. It is the amount of decision-making time removed from the batsman. At extreme pace, a movement of only a few inches becomes enormous because the correction window is microscopic.

Dravid knew roughly what was coming and still could not stop it.

Tendulkar had just watched Dravid's stump disappear and still could not stop it.

There may have been faster balls in Test cricket. There have certainly been bigger spells. But as a two-ball demonstration of what extreme velocity can do to elite technique, this remains almost unsurpassable.

2. Shane Warne to Mike Gatting

Old Trafford, 1993 - The Ball That Resurrected an Art

The mythology occasionally obscures just how technically astonishing this delivery was. Shane Warne was playing his first Ashes Test. Mike Gatting was an experienced player of spin. Warne came on and delivered his first ball in Test cricket in England.

It began outside Gatting's leg stump. Not marginally outside. Comfortably outside. Gatting therefore did what generations of orthodox batsmen had been taught to do: cover the line with his front pad and bat. But the ball had been released with enormous revolutions.

First came drift.

Then dip.

Then bite.

The ball pitched outside leg, gripped and ripped across Gatting. His bat followed his pad, but the ball had turned beyond both. It clipped the off stump. Gatting's reaction completed the masterpiece. He looked at the wicketkeeper, then at the pitch, then back towards his stumps as though some third party might explain what had happened.

Warne had not merely beaten the batsman.

He had defeated Gatting's conception of what a cricket ball was capable of doing.

The delivery was Warne's first against England and quickly became known as the "Ball of the Century"; its wider significance was the renewed prestige it gave leg-spin in an era increasingly dominated by pace.

A great ball normally asks a question.

Warne's asked one for which Gatting did not possess an answer.

3. Shoaib Akhtar to VVS Laxman

Rawalpindi, 2004 – The Snake Ball

During the 3rd Test of India’s historic 2004 tour of Pakistan in Rawalpindi*, Shoaib Akhtar produced one of those deliveries that perfectly captured why he was such a terrifying proposition at full pace.

VVS Laxman was well set on 71, batting with his customary fluency, when the Rawalpindi Express came charging in.

Akhtar unleashed a thunderbolt at around 149 km/h (93 mph)

Out of the hand, it appeared almost harmless by his standards—a very full delivery seemingly heading towards the leg-stump line. For a batsman of Laxman’s class, it initially looked like a ball waiting to be dispatched.

Then came the magic.

At extreme pace, the ball swerved dramatically and very late through the air, changing its apparent line and leaving Laxman with virtually no time to adjust.

Laxman was completely deceived.

His bat went down for the line he had initially read, but the ball had other ideas. It flashed past the bat and crashed into the stumps, leaving Laxman momentarily frozen in disbelief.

Bowled.

It wasn’t merely the speed that made the delivery extraordinary. It was the combination of 149 km/h pace, a very full length, late aerial movement and almost no reaction time.

That was Shoaib Akhtar at his most destructive.

You could prepare for the pace.

You could prepare for the swing.

But when 93 mph pace started moving late in the air, sometimes there simply wasn’t enough time to prepare for both.

A delivery worthy of the name Rawalpindi Express.

India crushed Pakistan to create history by winning a Test series in Pakistan for the first time, but that is still not talked about today. That snake ball is still talked about in many cricketing conversations, overshadowing the Indian glory.

4. Imran Khan to Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath

Karachi, 1982–83 - When Swing Floored India

There have been periods when a fast bowler has appeared almost incompatible with the batting techniques of his era.

Imran Khan reached such a point during India's 1982–83 tour of Pakistan.

He was quick, athletic, supremely confident and capable of making an older ball move late enough to transform apparently straight deliveries into traps. Against India that winter, the terrifying element was not simply pace.

It was late pace.

Sunil Gavaskar was among the greatest opening batsmen ever produced. Gundappa Viswanath possessed superb hands and remarkable judgement. Yet Imran repeatedly created the same optical illusion. The batsman committed to the apparent line. Then the ball changed its destination. Against Gavaskar, the late inward movement attacked the pads. Against Viswanath, the movement invaded the narrow corridor between bat and body. This is the essence of great fast swing bowling: not movement for exhibition, but movement occurring after the batsman's major decision has already been made.

At medium pace, the batsman can compensate.

At Imran's pace in Karachi, compensation became almost impossible.

This was fast bowling stripped of decoration.

Run in hard.

Present the seam.

Attack the stumps.

Make the ball move late.

And force two of India's greatest technicians to discover that even correct technique has physical limits.

5. Michael Holding to Geoffrey Boycott

Bridgetown, 1981 - Six Balls of Escalating Terror

Calling only the final delivery great misses the point. The final ball worked because of the five before it. Geoffrey Boycott was perhaps the ideal victim for this particular masterpiece. His batting philosophy was built around judgement, survival and technical certainty.

Michael Holding attacked all three.

Ball one hurt him.

Another beat him.

Others climbed towards thigh, chest and throat.

Boycott was forced progressively deeper into survival mode. His weight retreated. His mind began preparing for the next violent delivery rising towards him. Then Holding changed the geometry.

The sixth ball was fuller.

Boycott's body remained conditioned by what had preceded it. The bat could not descend quickly enough.

Off stump exploded from the ground.

Boycott later acknowledged that he had scarcely managed to lay bat on ball during the over. Contemporary recollections describe the sequence as blows to hand and body, increasingly hostile lift, and finally the full delivery that uprooted off stump.

This is why the over matters. Holding did not simply bowl an unplayable ball. He manufactured an unplayable batsman. Five deliveries altered Boycott's reactions. The sixth punished those altered reactions. That is fast bowling as psychological engineering.

6. Waqar Younis to Brian Lara

Rawalpindi, 1997 — The Yorker as a Guided Missile

Brian Lara had already struck Waqar Younis for two boundaries.

For many bowlers, that would have meant retreat: shorten the length, protect the boundary, reconsider the plan.

Waqar attacked harder.

The ball was delivered full and fast. Its initial trajectory offered Lara enough width to believe another attacking stroke was available.

Then it curved.

Late.

Violently.

Inward.

Lara's bat descended along the line he had originally read. The ball was no longer there. It crashed into the stumps - Lara had made 15 from only nine balls; the scorecard simply records b Waqar Younis. The surviving footage captures why those three words are inadequate.

Waqar's yorker was unique because it was not merely a straight, fast ball aimed at the batsman's toes. At his best, the ball behaved like a projectile receiving a late steering command. The batsman saw width. Then suddenly there was none. Lara's stillness afterwards is almost as memorable as the wicket. Great batsmen usually react to dismissal. Sometimes the delivery is so good that reaction itself seems pointless.

7. Michael Holding to Tony Greig

The Oval, 1976 - The Answer to “Grovel”

No series in modern cricket had been emotionally prepared quite like the summer of 1976.

Tony Greig's pre-series declaration that England intended to make West Indies "grovel" became fuel for Clive Lloyd's team.

By The Oval, West Indies were not merely trying to win. They were finishing an argument. The surface was dry and offered little obvious assistance. Holding did not require much. His approach to the crease was almost absurdly smooth. No visible strain. No theatrical leap. Then came frightening velocity.

Against Greig, the crucial delivery attacked from a demanding length, hurried him and penetrated his defence.

Holding dismissed Greig in both innings at The Oval and finished the match with the extraordinary figures of 14 for 149, including 8 for 92 in the first innings.

Those numbers matter because they explain the delivery. This was not a bowler exploiting a green surface for three overs.

Holding maintained genuine pace on an unforgiving pitch over an enormous workload. The Greig wicket consequently became more than another bowled dismissal. It became the visual punctuation mark of the entire summer.

8. Malcolm Marshall to Allan Border

Adelaide, 1984–85 - Millimetres of Genius

Allan Border was exceptionally difficult to bowl to.

Compact technique. Fierce concentration. Minimal unnecessary movement.

Malcolm Marshall's solution demonstrated why he may have been the most complete fast bowler cricket has produced.

From around the wicket to the left-hander, Marshall could create an angle suggesting that the ball would continue into the body.

Border therefore had to respect the incoming line.

Then the seam changed the equation. The ball straightened sufficiently to pass the outside edge and disturb the off stump. Not by a foot. By almost nothing.

That is the beauty of the delivery.

Spectacular swing makes wonderful television, but the most efficient fast bowling often requires only the width of a bat's edge.

Marshall understood angles better than almost anybody.

His height was relatively modest for a West Indian fast bowler. He compensated through speed, skidding trajectory, wrist position, intelligence and extraordinary control of the crease.

Against Border, those components became one delivery. A batsman can survive large movement by missing everything. Marshall produced exactly enough movement to beat the bat and still hit the wicket. Perfection measured in millimetres.

9. Mohammad Asif to Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar

Karachi, 2006 - Seam Bowling Without Waste

If Shoaib Akhtar represented velocity, Mohammad Asif represented geometry.

Karachi in 2006 was his masterpiece.

His pace was lively rather than extreme. Yet batsmen frequently appeared later against Asif than against quicker bowlers because they could not determine which direction the ball would take after pitching.

His upright wrist and seam presentation created uncertainty without visible effort.

The great example was VVS Laxman.

Asif hit the surface and the ball jagged back sharply. Laxman's bat came down according to the original line.

His stumps were rearranged.

Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer subsequently described the deliveries that bowled Sehwag and Laxman as effectively unplayable. Asif himself later explained that the Karachi Test was where he acquired much greater control of the ball coming back into the right-hander.

And the destruction was not confined to one innings.

In India's second innings, Asif clean-bowled Sehwag, Laxman and Tendulkar.

That is important.

This was not one freak delivery produced by an irregular bowler. Asif was repeatedly making world-class batsmen misread the same fundamental problem.

There was no exaggerated run-up.

No 95-mph intimidation.

No theatrical swing.

Just a seam rotating towards the batsman like the sight of impending bad news.

10. Simon Jones to Michael Clarke

Old Trafford, 2005 - The Leave That Was Engineered

Michael Clarke shouldered his arms.

That is the essential detail.

A batsman being bowled while defending can be defeated by movement. A batsman being bowled while leaving has been defeated before the ball pitches.

Simon Jones had spent time shaping the reverse-swinging ball away from Clarke.

The Australian began recognising the visual pattern.

Release.

Line outside off.

Ball moving away.

Leave.

Jones then changed the direction. Same general visual invitation. Different destination. Clarke lifted his bat and watched the ball begin outside off stump. Then reverse swing pulled it back. Off stump was demolished.

Accounts of the dismissal describe Clarke expecting another ball to move away after Jones had conditioned him with outswing. Jones himself has explained that he deliberately spent overs making Clarke comfortable with the ball moving away before trusting his instinct and switching to the inswinger.

That makes this much more than an extravagant reverse-swinger. It was a deception constructed over time. Clarke's leave was not stupidity. It was evidence that Jones's plan had worked perfectly.

11. Imran Khan to Ian Botham

Edgbaston, 1982 - The Duel of the All-Rounders

There was additional electricity whenever Imran Khan and Ian Botham confronted each other.

Both were alpha cricketers. Both could transform matches with either discipline. Both understood that dismissing the other carried symbolic weight beyond a normal wicket. Imran's great weapon was the late full ball. The apparent line invited Botham to bring the bat down straight. Then came the movement. The ball dipped and curved late enough to evade the descending blade and attack the stumps. The brilliance lies in how little time Botham was given to adjust.

A conventional swinging delivery announces itself earlier, but those of Imran were a bolt from the blue.

The batsman began his stroke.

Only then did the ball reveal its intention.

The duel therefore captured Imran at his most dangerous: pace combined with movement, but controlled by an increasingly sophisticated understanding of how to manipulate an ageing cricket ball.

12. Andrew Flintoff to Jacques Kallis

Edgbaston, 2008 - Hostility with a Purpose

This dismissal is sometimes remembered inaccurately as simply a ball that jagged through Kallis's defence. The real sequence was better. Jacques Kallis was 64.

Flintoff attacked him with an extraordinary mixture of yorkers and short balls. One yorker struck Kallis's boot and produced an enormous LBW appeal.

Not out.

Flintoff became more intense.

The contest had become personal.

After another sequence of short and full deliveries, Flintoff produced the killer: a superb swinging yorker.

Kallis could not stop it.

The stump went flying.

Contemporary reporting described Flintoff's sequence as yorker, bouncers, fuller delivery, another yorker onto the boot, followed shortly afterwards by the decisive yorker that swung away and uprooted off stump. Kallis himself called Flintoff's spell "fantastic."

This was one of the reasons Flintoff at his peak was so compelling. He was not always a statistically dominant fast bowler. But when rhythm, crowd and confrontation aligned, he could make Test cricket feel like heavyweight boxing.

Kallis was one of the most technically secure batsmen of his generation.

For several minutes Flintoff made technical security seem irrelevant.

13. Jeff Thomson to Gundappa Viswanath

Sydney, 1977–78 - The Ball That Arrived Too Soon

Jeff Thomson's pace was different.

Other great fast bowlers generated fear through hostility or bounce. Thomson's slinging action created something closer to temporal confusion. The ball seemed to arrive before the batsman's internal clock said it should.

Against Gundappa Viswanath in Sydney, the danger came from a delivery driven hard into the surface. Viswanath was an outstanding player of pace because of his supple wrists and late adjustment.

But late adjustment requires time.

Thomson removed it.

The ball climbed towards the lower extremity before Viswanath could properly reorganise. What should have been a controlled response became emergency defence.

That is the fundamental characteristic of extreme pace.

It reduces batsmanship from choice to reflex.

Against ordinary fast bowling, a batsman sees, decides and executes. Against Thomson at full speed, those three processes almost collapse into one.

The delivery is remembered because it demonstrates why eyewitnesses of Thomson's peak often speak about him differently from other fast bowlers. It was not merely that the speed gun would have produced an impressive number. It was what his speed did to human movement.

14. Dale Steyn to Michael Vaughan

Port Elizabeth, 2004 - The Announcement

A correction is necessary here: although part of the 2004–05 South African season, the Port Elizabeth Test itself was played in December 2004.

Dale Steyn was 21 and playing his first Test. Michael Vaughan was England's captain and one of the world's finest strokemakers. England needed only 142 to win but had slipped to 11 for two. Vaughan steadied things with Andrew Strauss.

Then Steyn came back. Vaughan struck him for two boundaries in the over. The young bowler responded with something extraordinary. The ball was full and fast, initially angling towards the leg/middle-stump line. Vaughan shaped to play through the on side. Then the ball swung away. Late. Very late.

It crossed Vaughan and knocked his off stump out of the ground.

Contemporary reporting described a delivery pitching around middle and removing off stump; later accounts emphasised the astonishing lateness of the outswing.

There are deliveries that represent a bowler's career in miniature. This was Steyn before the world fully understood Steyn: pace, full length, aggression, late outswing, rattling and a celebration of youthful joy.

England won the Test.

But South Africa had discovered something special.

15. Dennis Lillee to Viv Richards

Melbourne, 1981 - The Last Ball

Some wickets carry their own soundtrack.

Dennis Lillee against Viv Richards at the Melbourne Cricket Ground was already theatre: Australia's great fast bowler against the most intimidating batsman in world cricket.

Then came the final ball of the day's play.

Richards was the sort of batsman who tried to impose himself psychologically before the bowler reached the crease. Lillee was among the few fast bowlers temperamentally equipped to respond in kind.

The delivery attacked the stumps but moved sufficiently to defeat Richards.

Bowled.

Last ball.

The MCG erupted.

The importance of timing cannot be separated from the quality of the ball. A wicket on the last delivery of a day gives the dismissed batsman an entire night to replay it and gives the fielding side an entire night to celebrate it.

Years later, Australians who watched it as children would still cite the moment as inspirational; the sight of Lillee bowling Richards with the final ball of the day became part of Australian cricket folklore.

Some deliveries win sessions.

Some become childhood memories.

This one did both.

16. Jason Gillespie to Brian Lara

Brisbane, 2000 - The Corridor Reduced to a Thread

Brian Lara was especially difficult to bowl at because conventional "good areas" were often scoring areas for him.

Give him width, and the cover drive appeared. Attack the pads and the wrists took over. Pitch short and he could pull.

Jason Gillespie's answer was precision.

Hard length. Upright seam. A line close enough to off stump that Lara had to engage. The ball then deviated just enough.

That phrase—just enough—is crucial. A huge outswinger may miss Lara's bat and his stumps. A straight delivery may meet the middle. Gillespie found the fraction between them.

The best seam bowling is frequently less visually dramatic than great swing bowling because the movement occurs after pitching and may amount to only centimetres.

But against an elite batsman, centimetres are enormous.

Lara's technique had accounted for the original trajectory. Gillespie's seam position changed the trajectory after the calculation had been made. There was no recovery.

That is the seam bowler's ideal: force the correct stroke, then make that stroke insufficient.

17. Allan Donald to Sachin Tendulkar

Durban, 1996 - White Lightning Against the Master

Kingsmead could be vicious. Allan Donald made it more so.

South Africa's fast bowler operated with the aggression of someone trying to hurry not merely the batsman's stroke but his thinking. Sachin Tendulkar was already India's captain and premier batsman. Donald attacked him with pace and bounce, forcing him to respect the short ball and the possibility of being pushed backwards.

Then came the fuller threat.

This is an ancient fast-bowling principle, but Donald executed it at extraordinary speed.

Once the batsman's body begins anticipating the short ball, the fuller ball becomes fractionally more dangerous. The front foot must travel further. The head must reorganise.

Against a bowler approaching 90 mph and beyond, fractions become decisive.

Donald was one of the great practitioners of that uncomfortable space where the batsman is never completely certain whether to move forward or backwards.

Against Tendulkar at Durban, the fascination was not that a weak batsman had been overwhelmed.

It was that one of the greatest players of fast bowling could be made to look vulnerable.

That is perhaps the highest compliment a fast bowler can receive.

18. Curtly Ambrose to Dean Jones and Allan Border

Melbourne, 1988–89 - The Giant Learns to Aim Low

Curtly Ambrose's height naturally made batsmen think about bounce.

That was precisely why his fuller deliveries were so dangerous.

From his release point, a good-length ball could climb unpleasantly. The batsman therefore became conditioned to defend higher and to respect the delivery attacking the splice.

Then Ambrose went for the base.

Dean Jones and Allan Border discovered the other dimension of his bowling. The surviving footage of the MCG spell shows Ambrose attacking the two Australians with consecutive yorking assaults, making a mess of two outstanding batsmen. Ambrose's greatness is sometimes simplified into height plus accuracy. That understates him. His real advantage was the range of trajectories his height created.

A batsman seeing the ball released from such altitude naturally calculated for bounce. Ambrose could exploit that calculation by pitching fuller. The yorker then seemed to descend from somewhere above the batsman's normal eyeline.

Against Jones and Border, intimidation was not produced by bowling at their heads.

It was produced by making them fear their toes while knowing the next ball could still climb towards their gloves.

19. Allan Donald to Michael Atherton

Johannesburg, 1999–2000 - Old Rivals, No Peace

Few batsman-bowler relationships defined an era more completely than Michael Atherton against Allan Donald.

Atherton represented resistance.

Donald represented force.

Their contests were fascinating because neither man's method changed fundamentally.

Atherton knew Donald would attack. Donald knew Atherton would refuse to surrender. Johannesburg added the Highveld's bounce to the equation. Donald hit a demanding length and extracted the sort of steep, rapid deviation that makes a batsman feel as though the pitch itself has joined the attack. Atherton was forced to react rather than dictate.

The ball climbed and moved, squaring him and bringing the outside edge into play. The greatness here lies partly in accumulated history. A delivery does not exist in a vacuum when two players have spent years testing each other. Every Donald ball to Atherton carried memories of previous spells. Every leave and defensive stroke was part of a continuing argument about whether technical courage could withstand sustained pace. This delivery belonged to that argument.

Donald was no longer simply trying to dismiss an England opener.

He was trying to break the opponent who had made survival against him into a personal speciality.

20. Glenn McGrath to Brian Lara

Barbados, 1995 - The Simplest Ball on the List

There is an irony in finishing with Glenn McGrath. Many of the deliveries above are spectacular. Warne turns one across an impossible distance. Waqar bends a yorker. Steyn swings one from leg towards off. Holding detonates a stump at terrifying speed. McGrath's genius was often that nothing looked spectacular until the batsman was walking away.

Against Lara in Barbados, the essential formula was pure McGrath. Line near off stump. Good length. Bounce. Small deviation. No wasted movement. No attempt to manufacture theatre. Lara had to play. The ball did enough.

The scorecard from Australia's historic 1995 Barbados victory records Lara falling to McGrath as part of the young Australian fast bowler's five-wicket second-innings haul.

And perhaps that is the appropriate delivery with which to finish.

Because bowling perfection is not always measured by the distance between where the ball pitches and where it finishes.

Sometimes perfection means reducing the batsman's options until every choice contains danger.

Leave it: off stump is threatened.

Play straight: outside edge is threatened.

Drive: bounce is waiting.

Defend: movement is waiting.

McGrath built a career inside that tiny uncertainty. Where Warne's greatest ball appeared to violate physics, McGrath's greatest deliveries seemed almost obvious. That was the deception. Everyone knew where he intended to bowl. The batsman knew. The crowd knew. McGrath knew that they knew. Then he bowled there anyway. And took the wicket.

Thank You

Faisal Caesar