THE doosra was delivered late in a Sheffield Shield match already pronounced dead. NSW versus Tasmania was out of breath as a contest, a draw the inevitable result, the crowd either yawning or leaving or long-gone … and then … and then … Jason Krejza ambled in and bowled the most significant delivery by an Australian spinner since the retirement of Shane Warne.
Krejza was bowling to NSW's Usman Khawaja. He'd already cleaned up Test vice-captain Michael Clarke with a top spinner that jumped like Steve Hooker. Krejza's offering to Khawaja landed a metre outside offstump and, as the left-hander was entitled to do, he ignored it, shouldering arms. The stock ball of Krejza and every other off-spinner in the country would have spun farther from harm's way - but the the elusive doosra, jagged back and disturbed the stumps.
"If I never get that ball again, ever, it'll be too soon," Khawaja told the Herald yesterday.
The doosra is the potent and almost mystical weapon of an off-spinner. It's the most difficult variation to master. Pakistan's Saqlain Mushtaq invented it; doosra meaning ''the second one'' or ''the other one'' in Urdu and Hindi. Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan went on to perfect it.
With Australia still searching for a matchwinning spinner in the post-Warne era, Krejza's new ball puts the more predictable Nathan Hauritz on notice that his Test place is under renewed threat.
''It's been a bit of a secret," Krejza said. "I've been working on it in pre-season for a while with [Tasmania wicketkeeper] Tim Paine.
''I just thought it was a good opportunity, while the wicket at the SCG was turning quite a lot and there were marks outside the off stump for the left-hander, to give it a go.
''The more you bowl it in games, the more confident you're going to get in it, so I'll obviously look to do that. I'll bowl it more in the nets, try to keep it out of sight as much as I can. I just wanted to work on something new in the pre-season, and we just started saying, 'Let's try it this way.' It started working."
Try it which way?
"I'm not telling," Krejza replied.
Doosras are so difficult to bowl that Muralitharan, India's Harbhajan Singh, Pakistan's Shoaib Malik and South Africa's Johan Botha have all been reported to the ICC for illegal straightening of the arm while doing it. A spin summit organised by Cricket Australia in July went to extent of ruling against teaching it to young spinners. But Krejza has indulged in a bit of self-education as he attempts to force his way back into the Test XI.
Hauritz has an accurate stock ball, and while his one-day form has been exemplary, his omission from the final Ashes Test proved selectors are yet to be convinced of his long-term value. A veritable army of past Test players called for Krejza, who took 12 wickets on debut in India last year before falling from favour, to be chosen for this week's series opener against West Indies.
A doosra from Krejza in the first innings of the Shield game went horribly awry, sailing hip-high to Brad Haddin. A more hittable delivery has never been seen. Instead of sending the ball up to Oxford Street, Haddin miscued it straight to Alex Doolan at midwicket. Then came the ball of the season to Khawaja.
It looked spectacular to the naked eye, and again on replay, but Khawaja suggested the worn state of the SCG pitch might have played its part in the savage amount of turn.
Coming off a classy knock of 80 in the first innings, Khawaja took a moment to digest the manner of his second-innings dismissal for just two, standing motionless Mike Gatting-style while Krejza celebrated long and loud.
"He'd been bowling a few of them [doosras] in the game, for sure," Khawaja said.
"It didn't look like it had many revolutions on it. It didn't look like it was going to do much but it hit the edge of the crack, right on the outside. It just speared back into my stumps. It was definitely a doosra.
''It wasn't like a Murali doosra out of the back of the hand, it was out of the front, I think. There were cracks there but I'm not taking anything away from 'Krazy'.
''He landed it in the perfect spot, great ball. He didn't bowl any to me in the first dig but a few of the other boys were saying how he was trying them for most of the match."
The truth is that Krejza's moment of magic was a combination of pitch and puppetry.
However, with Australia desperate to unearth a tweaker with the kind of zip and spark and unpredictability that made Warne beyond great, Krejza has turned one more stone. by Will Swanton - smh.com.au |
