Chaminda Vaas was never purely about raw pace or theatrical intimidation. He was about craft. A left-arm seamer with immaculate control, subtle movement and relentless accuracy, Vaas could make a new ball swing, seam or move sharply inward into a batsman before settling into the kind of pressure that eventually broke them.

Vaas took 355 wickets in 111 Tests and 400 in 322 ODIs, becoming Sri Lanka’s most prolific fast bowler in both formats. He could bat too, scoring more than 3,000 Test runs – which includes a century. But his defining quality was simple: he made precision feel dangerous, and that came to the fore at the 2003 World Cup, where he emerged as the leading wicket-taker with 23 wickets.

Now 52, and sporting a striking silver mane, Vaas remains closely involved with the game as a coach and mentor. He was recently in Hyderabad for a mentorship stint with the Palamuru Strikers in TG20. In an interview with The Hindu, he talks about the evolution of fast bowling, the demands of modern cricket, his coaching experiences around the world, and memories of Sri Lanka’s iconic 1996 World Cup triumph. Excerpts:

You have worked across the world with various franchises as a mentor and coach. How has that experience been?

With subcontinent players, their maturity takes some time to develop, and their game understanding can be a bit limited early on. But once they mature, they learn quickly. I always tell youngsters that discipline and fitness are the two things you cannot compromise on in this sport. If you’re committed to becoming a cricketer, you have to sacrifice a lot — but if you commit to yourself, I’m sure you can succeed. The way youngsters in India have stepped up and delivered for Indian cricket has been amazing.

You played over 100 Tests and 300 ODIs. Those are remarkable numbers for a fast bowler, given how brutal the game is on the body. With today’s focus on nutrition and fitness science, players still seem to break down more often. Is there anything about modern training or diet that makes you think, “We never needed that to play this much cricket”?

I’m not going to argue with the science. A lot of new methods and logic have come up. But one thing I do believe is that the amount of cricket today’s youngsters play can sometimes be too much. As I said earlier, fitness is the most important thing. If you’re physically strong enough to support your mindset, that matters most. You need to look after yourself, time things right, and stay focused, especially fast bowlers. If you want to play longer and perform well, fitness comes first, along with proper rehab and the right diet.

You were known for your late in-swingers, especially to right-handed batters. What are your thoughts on swing bowling in the current era?

After watching the last edition of the IPL, most bowlers don’t swing the ball much anymore. The game has become a batsman’s paradise. But I still believe bowlers who can swing the ball and hit the right areas can take wickets. The number of balls going for boundaries is higher than bowlers might expect, but I’m confident that bowlers who focus on swing can still take plenty of wickets.

Left-arm fast bowlers seem to carry a certain aura that right-arm bowlers don’t quite have…

Left-armers are unique; they are a special breed. When they start bowling and try to perform, they always focus and give their best. I’m not saying right-armers don’t, but left-armers bring something special, and they tend to do things the right way.

The game has become batsman-dominated, thanks in part to T20 cricket. If you were coaching an up-and-coming 18-year-old left-arm pace bowler today, would you tell him to focus purely on swing, or on developing variations? What’s the right balance?

As a bowler, you have to keep it simple. My philosophy as a coach – for bowlers or batters – is not to complicate the game. If you overcomplicate things, they won’t go your way; if you keep things simple, the game itself is simple. Especially in fast bowling, I always say: do the right things. The batter will come after you, but remember, you have six balls to his one chance. If you bowl good areas and good lines consistently, you’ll get your wickets and keep the batter under pressure.

You spoke about your relationship with Muralitharan. When you trained together, how many times did you face him, and did you ever figure him out by the end of your career?

It was always very difficult for me to read him. He’d bowl the off-spinner or the doosra, and I never quite got the better of him. Nor he of me! But yeah, he was very hard to face. I could see why he became such an important bowler. Every time he practised, he’d bowl right until the end of the session. That’s the kind of dedication and potential that made him the number one bowler in the world.

This year marked the 30th anniversary of the 1996 World Cup win. Did the team have a group chat to reminisce, or do friends and family bring it up with you on the anniversary?

We celebrated in Malaysia this year. One of the Sri Lankan community groups organised it there. We went as a team and had a really good time. Even though Sri Lanka is a small country, a group of us — three or four guys at least — meet up regularly and share memories. We had a great time in Malaysia, even played a game together.

It’s been 30 years, and you’ve spoken about that campaign a lot. But is there one behind-the-scenes story that not many people know?

Nothing specific comes to mind, but if I have to mention something, then I will say that we had a tough time in 1996. After touring Australia, we had a terrible tournament there, and then there was the Motera incident and a few other setbacks. We went into the 1996 World Cup as underdogs, but we played as one family. I remember our captain, Arjuna Ranatunga, telling us that it was a very important tournament. He told us not to show off, but to play well from game one. He always encouraged the youngsters, and that’s how we came together as a team and won the World Cup.

You’ve had a 30-year career across various franchises, and interest in the sport has only grown. Tell us about dressing-room life, something fans never really get to see or understand, especially with the national team.

It depends on the format. A Test match is totally different from a one-day game. In Tests, you get up every morning and come back to the dressing room, whether things are going well as a team or not, you have to face it together. There are ups and downs, but as a player, you deal with all of that in the dressing room.

In one-day cricket, it’s similar, we always support and encourage each other and try to give our best, whether we’re representing our country, playing county cricket in England, or playing franchise cricket. You need a good rapport with your teammates wherever you play.

On a lighter note, during your time with the Sri Lankan national team as a player or coach, who was the most fun or chaotic player to have around?

There are a few, like Akila Dananjaya and Lasith Malinga. They’re all so interesting, always asking questions. Even before going to bed, they ask about how to face a particular ball. I loved working with them, and I have a lot of experience with that group. It’s great to see them doing so well now.

You played in the Indian Premier League with Deccan Chargers. What’s your most striking memory from that time with the franchise?

There were so many exceptional cricketers in that dressing room – Adam Gilchrist, Herschelle Gibbs, Andrew Symonds, Shahid Afridi, Rohit Sharma (who’s gone on to do wonders for Indian cricket), VVS Laxman. Learning and sharing with them taught me so much. We won the IPL title in 2009 in South Africa, playing as a true team. Everyone gave their best when it mattered. Coming from different countries, we became like a family, sharing everything.

Mohammad Shami about to deliver a ball in a one-day international match against New Zealand, October 23, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Deepak K.R./The Hindu

At the 2023 ICC Men’s ODI Cricket World Cup, Mohammad Shami ended with the most wickets – 24 from only seven games. The standout feature of Mr. Shami’s bowling was his seam position, which commentators described as being “bolt upright”. When the bowled ball pitches seam-first into the pitch, the way it bounces back up becomes hard to predict – more so than if the ball is swinging, which batters can read ‘in the air’. Mr. Shami used this unpredictability to get batters into trouble.

In the ways in which it differs from spin bowling, seam bowling is a study in contradiction. In spin, the direction in which the bowled ball spins is the same as that of the arm that is spinning it. But in seam bowling, the bowler’s arm is moving counter-clockwise (when bowled towards the left) while the bowled ball spins clockwise. That is, the bowler’s fingers on the ball impart a backspin.

Finger positions

To achieve the best effect, intuitively, the two fingers can be said to be just to either side of the seam’s centre. So once the fingers impart torque (rotating force) on the ball, the angular velocity imparted by the rotating arm should vanish and the backspin velocity should increase. At this moment, the spin axis will rapidly shift hemispheres, passing through the seam.

To avoid a wobbling seam – which would reduce the chance of the ball bouncing on the seam as well as compromise the aerodynamics of the contrast swing – the spin vector should coincide with the torque vector.

This is why, when a seam bowler imparts torque to the ball, the position of the two fingers matters.

“As a very simple explanation, the spin vector coincides with the torque vector only if the middle finger imparts more force to the ball than the index finger,” Franz Konstantin Fuss, professor and Chair of Biomechanics, University of Bayreuth, told The Hindu. “This can be achieved naturally, since the middle finger is stronger than the index finger.”

Deviation from the ideal

However, a 2013 study reported a problem: at the moment the torque is imparted, if the torque vector is at the topmost part of the ball (i.e. if the torque is imparted at the ball’s ‘north pole’), the spin vector wouldn’t have time to move to coincide with the torque, leading to a wobbly delivery. The effect could be corrected by imparting more rotations on the ball. But the researchers found that there was a limit to this because the bowler has a fixed amount of time to impart those rotations: around 50 milliseconds.

As a workaround, the researchers – Dr. Fuss and Robert Masterton Smith, both then of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne – advised applying finger pressure around 10-15 degrees away from the topmost part of the seam, rather than right on top, and to ensure the fingers move parallel to the seam as the torque is being imparted. This way, they estimated, there was a better chance of the spin and torque vectors coinciding, reducing the wobble.

A good seam position increases the ball’s ability to take advantage of swinging conditions. Swing is the result of different air flow on either side of a ball moving through the air. This can be achieved by keeping one side of the ball rougher than the other. As a result, air flow is streamlined on the smoother side and turbulent on the rougher side. But if the seam is angled towards the smooth side, the air flow becomes turbulent on both sides and the ball no longer experiences a lateral force that produces the characteristic sideways movement.

More torque is better until it isn’t

In a 2014 study, the same researchers reported examining the bowling actions and seam deliveries bowled by four state-level cricketers using a ‘smart ball’ equipped with battery-operated gyroscopes. Based on the data recorded by this device, including the spin rate and the torque imparted, they reported some actions that could improve the accuracy of the ball bowled.

According to them, “The best way of preventing seam wobble is … a position of the middle finger closer to the seam. … [The] worst angular positions of the spin axis at release are 19 degrees undershooting, 15 degrees overshooting, and 16 degrees deviating. These angles cause a considerable side force”. ‘Undershooting’ means the angle of the spin axis with the plane of the seam is acute (from the bowler’s side); ‘overshooting’ means it is obtuse. Deviation refers to the angle between the moving spin axis and the axis at the time of the ball’s release.

The researchers also wrote in their paper that “a clear result is that spin rate and magnitude of torque influence deviation angle, and the higher spin rate and torque, the larger is this angle.” So simply imparting more and more torque isn’t a good thing either.

It isn’t easy to do what Mr. Shami did – but that’s the point.