Cliff Notes – Why did Brydon Carse become briefly unplayable at Lord’s?
- A glare from the sightscreen during twilight affected batters’ ability to sight the ball, particularly impacting Shubman Gill’s performance against Brydon Carse’s bowling.
- Carse’s strategy of bowling fuller deliveries at a high pace, combined with the challenging visibility, led to two crucial wickets for England in a short spell.
Why did Brydon Carse become briefly unplayable at Lord’s?
It was twilight but the visibility was fine. There was no problem from the other end. It was the fourth evening of the Lord’s Test, and India were looking solid in their chase of 193. The partnership between KL Rahul and Karun Nair was going at a control percentage of 88.
Then Nair padded up to a straight delivery, seemingly misjudging both line and length. Shubman Gill, who hardly ever plays a false shot and had 601 runs to his name already in the series, came out and began missing or misconnecting full-tosses and half-volleys. His feet hardly moved, and his reactions seemed off. In his nine-ball stay, he was in control of four balls and not in control of five.
Test batters don’t bat the way Nair and Shubman Gill did that day. It turns out there was a byplay going on here: a struggle to sight the ball out of Brydon Carse’s hand. This phenomenon can be best described as: when you are seeing the ball well, you see a definite point of origin out of the hand, but in this final half hour or so, the ball was coming out of anywhere in the general area of the bowler’s hand.
It was because of a glare from the sight-screen just at that time, and just at that end, with the sun setting on the off side of the right-hand batter. Carse’s height of release made things even trickier.
Average pace of 139kph
Facing fast bowling is an extreme sport at the best of times. Carse’s average pace of 139kph in that spell converts to 42 yards per second, which means you have half a second to play the ball. The extra millisecond spent in picking the ball can be the difference between the normal, silken Gill and the uncertain Gill with cement feet and fumbling hands.
England had likely picked on something: in that four-over spell that evening, Carse landed 62.5% of his balls fuller than a good length. Fast bowlers don’t usually do that unless it is reversing, and Carse began that spell with a 10-over-old ball. It was just that end, and just that height that was causing problems.
In India’s first innings, Rahul had dug out a yorker from Carse in his last over of the second evening. Whether or not it was something that Ben Stokes and England filed away and worked on, England showed great situational awareness on the fourth evening to take two huge wickets with the new ball.
Shubman Gill had to walk back for 6
In a way, this was quite similar to the over that Andrew Flintoff bowled to Jacques Kallis at Edgbaston in 2008, although not remotely as egregious. Back then, the dark windows above the sightscreen were an issue. The windows were at just the right place for Flintoff to be able to take advantage of it, but not for Morne Morkel, who was too tall.
At Lord’s, there was no such obvious flaw. Everything is pristine at Lord’s. The sight boards, however, are a little thin, almost like a mesh. They are made of polycarbonate with contravision film, which allows vision through one side and makes it look opaque from the other. This had replaced the traditional wooden sightscreen, which had blocked the views of the members.
That in itself is not a problem. It has never been a problem for batters except during that half hour when the sun was just at the right angle to create a glare just behind Carse’s release point. Bowling full at such times is clever, because full balls give batters less time to react, and inflict maximum damage.
Had it been a regular feature, the batters might have brought it up with the umpires. India’s reaction has been to shrug and move on. Not that Kallis was able to do anything about a much more obvious glitch 17 years ago. He didn’t seem to try to stop play while batting, and only pointed out the windows later. That didn’t have any impact, as Kallis ducked into a Flintoff full-toss that he didn’t pick in the second innings.
The period of glare at Lord’s didn’t last long enough for it to be noticed at the time. These are the challenges and quirks of playing Test cricket at different venues that nothing other than experience can prepare you for. It has been that kind of series for India, where they have found ways to fall behind despite playing better cricket for longer periods. A brief window of play when the ball would be difficult to pick out of the hand of a specific bowler from a specific end at a specific time was the least expected way for this to happen.