IPL Qualifier I: Keeping it simple, Hazlewood provides the Josh for RCB

Hitting the six-to-eight metre band was his standard operational procedure. “I find if you really hit the wicket hard on that six to eight metres, it’s quite tough to bat,” he had said. He would veer towards either side of it to complicate the rigid mind of batsmen. Those would be his bait balls.

The planning worked, chiefly because the execution was flawless. His first ball to Shreyas Iyer, the Punjab Kings captain in rampaging touch, was classical Test-match hard length; the next was pushed a fraction further, which Shreyas gracefully punched for a pair of runs.

Smooth and without botheration. Here is his deception — he gives batsmen a false sense of security. That he is not supersonic, that his lack of slippery pace offers them an extra split second to execute the strokes, the absence of late swing encourages them to drive risk-free. It’s often a fallacy, as Shreyas realised. The next ball was quicker and fuller than its predecessor, outside the off-stump and shaping away after angling in. If Shreyas thought Hazlewood was just another hard-length chugger, who could be punished to his whims, he was brutally wrong. His horrendous swipe, revealing his ruthless underestimation of Hazlewood’s craft, ended in the wicket-keeper’s gloves.

Just one replay would suffice to comprehend the smarts of Hazlewood. He is not a man of excesses. The celebrations are usually muted affairs, a grin, nod and gentle high-fives. He doesn’t need excess conditions to thrive either. But whatever conditions he is presented with, he has the tools to extract the best. Dry, flat decks, he delves into his cutters and slower balls. Green-tops, he sticks to his traditional out-swing and in-swing wares, plus the wobble-seamers. Situational changes are spun around his strong fundamentals. Precision of lines, adeptness to alternate lengths and a temperament that lets him keep that half a smile in good times and bad. Shreyas busted, but more work remained. Different batsmen require different approaches. Every bowler knows this, but few have the gift of pulling it off.

Josh Hazlewood in action. (Express Photo by Kamleshwar Singh)

Hazlewood ambles in as though he has an iPad in his head that feeds him data about the batsman he is bowling at. Josh Inglis, he knows, is an excellent puller. So good for his own doom at times. The first ball of his next over, he went really short, screaming into his body. Inglis compulsively went for the pull, only to realise that the ball was quicker than he judged, a folly most batsmen commit against Hazlewood, and cramped him for space to complete his shot. The top-edge soared into deep fine leg’s hands.

In an era of data influx where bowlers keep off the batsmen’s strengths, Hazlewood’s non-conformism worked. It is because, more than anything else, he was working with the batsman’s ego. Most would have expected him to bounce out Shreyas rather than Inglis straightaway. Hazlewood thinks differently. He is a left-field thinker in an orthodox framework, schooled in the tricks of both worlds, acutely aware of his weaknesses as much as strengths. “You often find guys with strange actions or very fast arms have good changes of pace because they can deceive you, but for a rhythmical bowler like myself changes of pace are going to be hard. It’s just subtle changes here and there,” he explained the soul of his bowling to The Guardian.

He does not overcomplicate himself either — a pitfall several bowlers in the format stumble to. Returning to bowl in the 15th over, with just a wicket to take, he did not summon the glory ball. He bowled the same ball that he had bowled a thousand times in Test cricket. A length ball on the fourth-fifth stump line, breaking away. Azmatullah Omarzai attempted a horrific leg-side heave and managed just an edge that wicket-keeper Jitesh Sharma clung on to spectacularly.

This was his 21st wicket of the season, bettering his hitherto best count of 20 in the 2023 season. It would be hard to recollect those wickets. But that sums up Hazlewood, the bowler who picks up wickets in the shadows, a silent destroyer of violent batsmen.