India vs New Zealand: Tim Southee had spot on line, but bounced back with vital wickets and crucial fifty in 1st Test | Cricket News

The ball moved just enough. Sarfaraz Khan, on the charge and on 150, thought he was in control to launch Tim Southee over cover. But the ball landed an inch or two shorter than he had expected, and moved away. Late, devious movement. Small, subtle margins. The batsman miscued the ball to mid-off.Sarfaraz was Southee’s second and last wicket of the game, but as with the first, when he castled Rohit Sharma with an three-quarter seam ball, the timeless seam-art instigated India’s collapse.
In the sunset of his career, the 35-year-old remains a grossly underrated cricketer. His name barely sneaks into discourses on the fast-bowling elite of the modern era. He doesn’t possess unreal numbers like James Anderson, or the athletic grace of Kagiso Rabada, or the magical unorthodoxy of Jasprit Burmah’s, or the left-handed sorcery of his ex-partner Trent Boult. Southee is just another 130 kph trundler, everyman in craft, numbers and demeanour. Never sledges, doesn’t exchange stares or banter, shies away from the limelight.
His body of work, though, is immense; he is the only bowler who has completed a century of matches in all three formats; he is New Zealand‘s second highest wicket-taker, has hit more sixes in Tests than Viv Richards and Virender Sehwag, more frequently than Chris Gayle and Brendon McCullum; he has a better average in India (28.86) and Sri Lanka (21.47) than Anderson (30.27 and 33.27). In matches that New Zealand have won, he averages 22.39. Which means that when Southee strikes, sometimes with the bat too as in Bengaluru, New Zealand win.
Perhaps, it’s the way he wants himself to be portrayed — in the clutches of anonymity. “I am more of a soldier than a leader. I am not so good at ordering people as doing it myself,” he once admitted in a podcast with stuff.co.nz. He does not churn headline-worthy sentences. Surfing his Instagram and X feeds is a futile exercise in searching for anything juicy. His former teammate and coach at Maungakaramea Cricket Club, Steve Cunis, agrees: “He was always this shy boy who always kept smiling and bowling. Some of the batsmen, older than him, thought he was too soft. But he would wind them up with the ball. He was a tough character, who never gave up his dreams.”
Southee was put into a cricket club because at home, a sprawling farmhouse in Waiotira, 30-odd miles from Whangarei, he trampled the lawn where his sers played tennis. Every weekend, his father Murray drove Tim to the cricket club in the morning and picked him up in the evening. “He used to bowl all the time, always working on some delivery or the other. He would say he would be working on his out-swinger, or a slower ball that he had picked when watching a game,” he says.
Always learning
The quest to learn new tricks has defined his career. He burst forth with the booming out-swinger he bowled at pace. But when he shed pace to conserve his career, he mastered other tricks – like the three-quarter seam ball and the cutters, the latter he uses to devastating effect. He also became more pragmatic as the years rolled , ever more economical as he strangled batters with unrelenting accuracy.
The out-swinger though is the art that makes him, where his brain becomes as dangerous as his wrs. It’s not just about the strong wr of a farmer, tilting at release, that coaxes the ball into changing direction when it sniffs the bat – a lot of bowlers do that – but when and where the rerouting happens. It’s deceitfully late, lands often a few inches shorter than the conventional good length where seamers land the ball in search of swing.
Indian players return to pavilion after the end of play on the second day of the first test cricket match between India and New Zealand, at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, in Bengaluru, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (PTI Photo)
It was this ball that wowed former New Zealand coach John Bracewell to fast-track him into international cricket when he was only 19 and initiate the Southee Project. “For his age to have that control was amazing,” Bracewell once told this daily. “But there were other things too. He had a physique perfectly suited for a fast bowler, kind of durable and he was light on the feet, an easy repeatable action that led to fewer injuries.” Injuries have been the perennial thorn in the flesh of New Zealand fast bowlers. From Shane Bond to Simon Doull, Dion Nash to Shayne O’Connor, injuries have prevented many promising careers from blossoming.
For the three-quarter seamer, Southee holds the ball with two fingers across an angled seam, on a 40-45 degree angle, and snaps the wr at release. Batsmen are increasingly familiar with the trick, and success depends on how the bowler sets it up. Southee manipulates the width of the crease. Sometimes he goes wide, sometimes he doesn’t. But he first roughens them up with away-goers, inducing the fear on the outside edge. Then the three-quarter seamer kicks in. Rohit would know — Southee gave him a thorough working over in the 2021 World Test Championship final.
Beneath the wful smile and mild manners, though, is a tough character that keeps bouncing back. Coming to Bengaluru, his spot was under scrutiny. His last 13 innings had produced 10 wickets at an average of 64. He was asked to relinquish captaincy after the Sri Lanka capitulation, which made his place in the eleven uncertain. Had it not rained in Bengaluru, Mitchell Santner could have got the nod ahead of him. But with his career on the line, Southee produced a vintage new-ball spell and then hammered a throwback smash-and-grab half-century, just enough to stretch a gloriously understated career. But at 35 and in the 16th year of his international shift, it’s time he gets the accolades he deserves, despite his own aversion.