Ball of the Century
Encyclopedia
The Ball of the Century, also referred to as the Gatting Ball or simply That Ball, is the name given to a cricket
delivery bowled by Australia's Shane Warne
to England's Mike Gatting
. The event occurred on day two of the first Test
of the 1993 Ashes series
, which took place at Old Trafford, Manchester
. With his first ball against England
, in his first Ashes test, Warne produced a spectacular delivery that bowled
Gatting. It became recognised as being of considerable significance in not just the context of the match or series, but in cricket in general, helping to revive leg spin
bowling.
, and England picked two spin bowlers: Phil Tufnell
and debutant Peter Such
. In contrast, Australia picked three fast bowlers
, with the inexperienced Warne as the only spinner. Warne had played in 11 Test match
es up to that point, and taken 31 wickets at a moderate average
of 30.80 runs per wicket. Although showing some promise, Warne's early career had been less than spectacular and his style of bowling - leg spin - was seen by many cricket followers as an antiquated art with little value in the modern game. Pace bowling had dominated the game since the legendary West Indian
pace bowlers of the 1970s and 1980s.
English captain Graham Gooch
won the toss and elected to bowl first, hoping to use the pitch conditions to make batting
difficult for the Australians. Despite Mark Taylor
scoring a century
, Australia were dismissed for a moderate total of 289 runs. England also began well, reaching 71 runs before Mike Atherton
was dismissed by Merv Hughes
. Mike Gatting was the next man to bat, and he duly set about scoring runs. At this point, Australian captain Allan Border
turned to his leg spinner, Warne. However, Mike Gatting
was renowned as a world-class player of spin bowling, and was fully expected to give the inexperienced Warne a tough time.
After a slow run-up of just a few paces, Warne rolled his right arm over and delivered a leg break
to the right-handed Gatting. In slow-motion, it can be seen that the ball initially travels straight down the pitch towards the batsman. As it travels towards the batsman, the rapidly spinning cricket ball
starts to drift to the right (due to the Magnus effect
). The ball ends up bouncing several inches outside Gatting's leg stump
.
Gatting responded by thrusting his left leg forward towards the pitch of the ball, and pushing his bat
next to his pad. This was a standard tactic used by most experienced batsmen, with the intention that the ball hits the pad or the bat. Since the ball pitches outside the leg stump, the batsman cannot be given out LBW
, and if the ball spins slightly more than expected, it will hit the bat and bounce safely to the ground.
Upon bouncing, however, the ball spun far more than expected. It passed the outside edge of Gatting's bat, and clipped the top of his off-stump, dislodging the bails
. Gatting stared at the pitch for several seconds, before accepting his fate and walking off the field. The dismissal was captured in a photograph by Steve Lindsell, in which Gatting is in shock, while wicketkeeper Ian Healy
raises his arms in celebration behind and Gatting's off bail spins somewhere above his head.
a mere four runs later. Warne also accounted for Gooch and Andy Caddick in the innings, helping to reduce England to a first innings total of just 210. Encouraged by their bowling, Australia declared their second innings at 432 for 5 wickets. Warne then contributed four more wickets as Australia won the match by 179 runs, winning the man of the match award for his efforts.
This result of this match set the tone for the remainder of the series, and Australia cruised to a comfortable 4-1 victory, with Warne taking a total of 34 wickets at an average of 25.79 and being named the Australian man of the series (each team being awarded a separate Man of the Series award by the other in that series).
Warne's delivery to Gatting has become known as the Ball of the Century. Since that incident, Warne has come to be acknowledged as one of the best bowlers in history. During the penultimate Test match of his career on Boxing Day 2006, in the fourth Ashes Test against England, Warne took his 700th Test wicket, bowling Andrew Strauss
to become the first cricketer ever to reach this milestone.
Graham Gooch
commented on the reaction of Gatting: "He looked as though someone had just nicked his lunch", as Gatting was much mocked for his rotundity. This was further alluded to by journalist Martin Johnson, who said "How anyone can spin a ball the width of Gatting boggles the mind", and again by Gooch who added "If it had been a cheese roll, it would never have got past him."
During the Old Trafford Test of the 2005 Ashes series, the long-retired Gatting re-created the Ball Of The Century with an automated bowling machine programmed to deliver leg spin.
In 2009 the Irish chamber pop group The Duckworth Lewis Method
wrote a song called "Jiggery Pokery" about this incident.
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
delivery bowled by Australia's Shane Warne
Shane Warne
Shane Keith Warne is a former Australian international cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game. In 2000, he was selected by a panel of cricket experts as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Century, the only specialist bowler selected in the quintet...
to England's Mike Gatting
Mike Gatting
Michael "Mike" William Gatting OBE is a former English cricketer, who played first-class cricket for Middlesex and for England from 1977 to 1995, captaining the national side in twenty-three Test matches between 1986 and 1988...
. The event occurred on day two of the first Test
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
of the 1993 Ashes series
Australian cricket team in England in 1993
Four players debuted in the First Test: Andy Caddick and Peter Such for England and Brendon Julian and Michael Slater for the tourists. The new Australian opening partnership of Slater and Mark Taylor dominated the first part of the first day, putting on 128 for the first wicket, but it was Such...
, which took place at Old Trafford, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. With his first ball against England
English cricket team
The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...
, in his first Ashes test, Warne produced a spectacular delivery that bowled
Bowled
Bowled is a method of dismissing a batsman in the sport of cricket. This method of dismissal is covered by Law 30 of the Laws of cricket.A batsman is out bowled if his wicket is put down by a ball delivered by the bowler...
Gatting. It became recognised as being of considerable significance in not just the context of the match or series, but in cricket in general, helping to revive leg spin
Leg spin
Leg spin is a type of spin bowling in the sport of cricket. A leg spinner bowls right-arm with a wrist spin action, causing the ball to spin from right to left in the cricket pitch, at the point of delivery. When the ball bounces, the spin causes the ball to deviate sharply from right to left, that...
bowling.
Background
The pitch at Old Trafford traditionally favours spin bowlingSpin bowling
Spin bowling is a technique used for bowling in the sport of cricket. Practitioners are known as spinners or spin bowlers.-Purpose:The main aim of spin bowling is to bowl the cricket ball with rapid rotation so that when it bounces on the pitch it will deviate, thus making it difficult for the...
, and England picked two spin bowlers: Phil Tufnell
Phil Tufnell
Philip Clive Roderick Tufnell is a former English cricketer turned television personality. A slow left-arm orthodox spin bowler, "Tuffers" as he was known played 42 Tests and 20 One Day International matches for England, as well as playing for Middlesex from 1986 to 2002...
and debutant Peter Such
Peter Such
Peter Mark Such is an English cricketer. A hard-working county off-spinner, Such was brought into the Test arena in 1993 as a replacement for John Emburey but, despite taking 6 for 67 on debut, only played an initial 4 Tests before having to wait 5 years before his next appearance.Such enjoyed a...
. In contrast, Australia picked three fast bowlers
Fast bowling
Fast bowling, sometimes known as pace bowling, is one of the two main approaches to bowling in the sport of cricket. The other is spin bowling...
, with the inexperienced Warne as the only spinner. Warne had played in 11 Test match
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
es up to that point, and taken 31 wickets at a moderate average
Bowling average
Bowling average is a statistic measuring the performance of bowlers in the sport of cricket.A bowler's bowling average is defined as the total number of runs conceded by the bowlers divided by the number of wickets taken by the bowler, so the lower the average the better. It is similar to earned...
of 30.80 runs per wicket. Although showing some promise, Warne's early career had been less than spectacular and his style of bowling - leg spin - was seen by many cricket followers as an antiquated art with little value in the modern game. Pace bowling had dominated the game since the legendary West Indian
West Indian cricket team
The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...
pace bowlers of the 1970s and 1980s.
English captain Graham Gooch
Graham Gooch
Graham Alan Gooch OBE DL is a former cricketer who captained Essex and England. He was one of the most successful international batsmen of his generation, and through a career spanning from 1973 until 2000, he became the most prolific run scorer of all time with 67,057 runs...
won the toss and elected to bowl first, hoping to use the pitch conditions to make batting
Batting (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the cricket ball with a cricket bat to score runs or prevent the loss of one's wicket. A player who is currently batting is denoted as a batsman, while the act of hitting the ball is called a shot or stroke...
difficult for the Australians. Despite Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor (cricketer)
Mark Anthony Taylor, AO is a former Australian cricket player and Test opening batsman from 1988–1999, as well as captain from 1994–1999, succeeding Allan Border...
scoring a century
Century (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, a batsman reaches his century when he scores 100 or more runs in a single innings. The term is also included in "century partnership" which occurs when two batsmen add 100 runs to the team total when they are batting together. A century is regarded as a landmark score for...
, Australia were dismissed for a moderate total of 289 runs. England also began well, reaching 71 runs before Mike Atherton
Mike Atherton
Michael Andrew Atherton OBE is a broadcaster, journalist and retired England international cricketer. A right-handed opening batsman for Lancashire and England,and occasional leg-break bowler, he achieved the captaincy of England at the age of 25 and led the side in a record 54 Test matches...
was dismissed by Merv Hughes
Merv Hughes
Mervyn Gregory Hughes is a former Australian cricketer. A right-arm fast bowler, he represented Australia between 1985 and 1994 in 53 Test matches, taking 212 wickets. He played 33 One Day Internationals, taking 38 wickets. He took a hat trick in a Test against the West Indies at the WACA in...
. Mike Gatting was the next man to bat, and he duly set about scoring runs. At this point, Australian captain Allan Border
Allan Border
Allan Robert Border AO is a former Australian cricketer. A batsman, Border was for many years the captain of the Australian team. His playing nickname was "A.B.". He played 156 Test matches in his career, a record until it was passed by fellow Australian Steve Waugh...
turned to his leg spinner, Warne. However, Mike Gatting
Mike Gatting
Michael "Mike" William Gatting OBE is a former English cricketer, who played first-class cricket for Middlesex and for England from 1977 to 1995, captaining the national side in twenty-three Test matches between 1986 and 1988...
was renowned as a world-class player of spin bowling, and was fully expected to give the inexperienced Warne a tough time.
The delivery
Leg break
A leg break is a type of delivery in the sport of cricket. A delivery of a right-handed leg spin bowler. Leg breaks are also colloquially known as leggies or wrist spinners, as the wrist is the body part which is primarily used to impart spin on the ball, as opposed to the fingers in the case of...
to the right-handed Gatting. In slow-motion, it can be seen that the ball initially travels straight down the pitch towards the batsman. As it travels towards the batsman, the rapidly spinning cricket ball
Cricket ball
A cricket ball is a hard, solid leather ball used to play cricket. Constructed of cork and leather, a cricket ball is heavily regulated by cricket law at first class level...
starts to drift to the right (due to the Magnus effect
Magnus effect
The Magnus effect is the phenomenon whereby a spinning object flying in a fluid creates a whirlpool of fluid around itself, and experiences a force perpendicular to the line of motion...
). The ball ends up bouncing several inches outside Gatting's leg stump
Stump (cricket)
Stump is a term used in the sport of cricket where it has three different meanings:# part of the wicket# a manner of dismissing a batsman# the end of the day's play .-Part of the wicket:...
.
Gatting responded by thrusting his left leg forward towards the pitch of the ball, and pushing his bat
Cricket bat
A cricket bat is a specialised piece of equipment used by batsmen in the sport of cricket to hit the ball. It is usually made of willow wood. Its use is first mentioned in 1624....
next to his pad. This was a standard tactic used by most experienced batsmen, with the intention that the ball hits the pad or the bat. Since the ball pitches outside the leg stump, the batsman cannot be given out LBW
Leg before wicket
In the sport of cricket, leg before wicket is one of the ways in which a batsman can be dismissed. An umpire will rule a batsman out LBW under a series of circumstances which primarily include the ball striking the batsman's body when it would otherwise have continued on to hit the batsman's...
, and if the ball spins slightly more than expected, it will hit the bat and bounce safely to the ground.
Upon bouncing, however, the ball spun far more than expected. It passed the outside edge of Gatting's bat, and clipped the top of his off-stump, dislodging the bails
Bail (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, a bail is one of the two smaller sticks placed on top of the three stumps to form a wicket. The bails are used to determine when the wicket is broken, which in turn is one of the critical factors in determining whether a batsman is out bowled, stumped, run out or hit wicket...
. Gatting stared at the pitch for several seconds, before accepting his fate and walking off the field. The dismissal was captured in a photograph by Steve Lindsell, in which Gatting is in shock, while wicketkeeper Ian Healy
Ian Healy
Ian Andrew Healy is a former cricketer who played for Queensland and Australia. A specialist wicketkeeper and useful right-hand middle-order batsman, he made an unheralded entry to international cricket in 1988, after only six first-class games. His work ethic and combativeness was much needed...
raises his arms in celebration behind and Gatting's off bail spins somewhere above his head.
Aftermath
The fall of Gatting's wicket left England on 80 runs for 2 wickets, a position from which they never recovered, as Warne added the wicket of Robin SmithRobin Smith (cricketer)
Robin Arnold Smith is a former cricketer for Hampshire and England.Smith was nicknamed Judge or Judgie for his resemblance to a judge when he grew his hair long...
a mere four runs later. Warne also accounted for Gooch and Andy Caddick in the innings, helping to reduce England to a first innings total of just 210. Encouraged by their bowling, Australia declared their second innings at 432 for 5 wickets. Warne then contributed four more wickets as Australia won the match by 179 runs, winning the man of the match award for his efforts.
This result of this match set the tone for the remainder of the series, and Australia cruised to a comfortable 4-1 victory, with Warne taking a total of 34 wickets at an average of 25.79 and being named the Australian man of the series (each team being awarded a separate Man of the Series award by the other in that series).
Legacy
This series marked the beginning of a long domination of world cricket by Australia, coinciding with the exceedingly successful career of Warne. Warne's bowling also provided an eye-opening insight into the subtleties and power of leg spin bowling for modern cricket audiences, who had become used to the spectacle of pace attacks, and marked a worldwide resurgence of popularity in the art of spin bowling in general, and leg spin in particular.Warne's delivery to Gatting has become known as the Ball of the Century. Since that incident, Warne has come to be acknowledged as one of the best bowlers in history. During the penultimate Test match of his career on Boxing Day 2006, in the fourth Ashes Test against England, Warne took his 700th Test wicket, bowling Andrew Strauss
Andrew Strauss
Andrew John Strauss, OBE is an English cricketer who plays county cricket for Middlesex County Cricket Club and is the captain of England's Test cricket team. A fluent left-handed opening batsman, Strauss favours scoring off the back foot, mostly playing cut and pull shots...
to become the first cricketer ever to reach this milestone.
Graham Gooch
Graham Gooch
Graham Alan Gooch OBE DL is a former cricketer who captained Essex and England. He was one of the most successful international batsmen of his generation, and through a career spanning from 1973 until 2000, he became the most prolific run scorer of all time with 67,057 runs...
commented on the reaction of Gatting: "He looked as though someone had just nicked his lunch", as Gatting was much mocked for his rotundity. This was further alluded to by journalist Martin Johnson, who said "How anyone can spin a ball the width of Gatting boggles the mind", and again by Gooch who added "If it had been a cheese roll, it would never have got past him."
During the Old Trafford Test of the 2005 Ashes series, the long-retired Gatting re-created the Ball Of The Century with an automated bowling machine programmed to deliver leg spin.
In 2009 the Irish chamber pop group The Duckworth Lewis Method
The Duckworth Lewis Method
The Duckworth Lewis Method are an Irish pop group formed by Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy and Thomas Walsh of Pugwash. The Duckworth Lewis Method is also the title of the group's only album, which was released on 3 July 2009, a few days before the start of the 2009 Ashes series. A concept album...
wrote a song called "Jiggery Pokery" about this incident.