Waiting for Harry Brook

Australia know sometimes it will be an unplayable ball, others will be the pull shot, he will chase wide ones and there’s always a chance of a glitch.

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This is what I would call a pretty standard field for a score of 57/3. Let’s call this the 357 field. A few fielders in the slips, ring for the rest except the fine leg out. That is what you would expect.

But when Harry Brook came in, the field was actually like this. Two of the offside ring had been moved from point and mid off to the rope. This was also the field he had for the 3rd ball of the series.

When he was eight from ten, they put out a fourth fielder to the boundary. They were concerned he would pull or hook, slash and flat bat. And he’d barely started his innings. You would be forgiven for thinking there is nowhere to bowl to him.

But there are four ways for a pace bowler to get Harry Brook out. That may seem like a lot, but it is common for an attacking player. In his case, you can bowl super, super tight to the top of off bail; he’s likely to edge or miss these balls. Or you can go very wide on a length. You can bump him. And the final option is the glitch shot, where he basically just takes a huge risk and it doesn’t work.

You may be asking, rightly, if he has these many issues, how is he averaging more than 50 in Test cricket? The simple answer is, he scores so fast, it’s hard to get to any of them.

Brook is new cricket. The second ball of this series, he came down the pitch and backed away to Mitchell Starc to flay him through the offside. Note the score: England had lost three wickets for only 43 runs, and Starc had them all.

By the third delivery, Australia had a long off.

It’s not a normal long off though. It’s not even a catching long off, it’s a decoy long off. Like when you have a catching short mid on. No one expects him to hole out; they’re just trying to get him to think different.

But the thing is, he is different. Harry Brook doesn’t wait, he creates.

The first delivery that works to Harry Brook is the ball hitting the outside of off bail. The range on this is really small, because too straight and he can flick with ease, and a little bit of room and he scores everywhere.

But the issue with this delivery is that to pull it off, you kind of need to be a genius. So most bowlers in the world can’t keep doing this to Brook. But Scott Boland can.

And if you look at the seamers who have delivered 30 balls to him in the last couple of years, Boland is one of the very few to go at under four runs an over. Starc is 5.5, Neser and Green are more than run a ball. So one way to dismiss him is for Boland is just to aim at off bail’s outside edge and never leave. Simple.

Like most Test batters, Brook is at his worst against length balls. It is the only way to slow him down or dismiss him. But this is deceptive.

Because Brook actually has one of the best averages against the length ball in the last few years. He’s not as supreme as final boss of the good one, Ollie Pope. But he’s right up there. So it’s not all length balls, it’s the ones that are unplayable for anyone.

So if your weakness is unplayable balls, that makes you good.