Wagner A Throwback To A Bygone Bouncer Age

Garfield Robinson breaks down the technique of Kiwi fast man Neil Wagner, who uses an old-fashioned approach to maximise his bowling at the highest level

Long regarded as a support bowler to Tim Southee and Trent Boult, Neil Wagner is now ahead of both in the ICC Test bowling rankings. He is currently ranked fifth, behind Pat Cummins, James Anderson, Kagiso Rabada and Vernon Philander and ahead of the likes of Mohammad Abbas, Jason Holder and Josh Hazlewood. Few would have picked him ahead of Southee or Boult, or ahead of someone like Stuart Broad, for that matter. And yet, the records show, that he has recently been more effective than they have been.

Wagner does not possess many of the fast bowler’s best gifts; he is not particularly tall or quick; he is a capable swing bowler but is nowhere near the class of teammates Boult and Southee in that regard.

He should, by all measure, be ordinary. But he is not. A Test-match specialist, Wagner has played 42 games for 174 wickets at an average of 27.51, with a strike rate of 52.64. This means he captures his wickets at over four per game, an admirable rate. For context, England fast bowler Stuart Broad’s rate is 3.54 wickets per game, though, to be fair, he has played almost three times the number of Tests.

Wagner’s main asset is his heart – a strong and uncompromising one that demands that he strains every sinew to ensure whoever is facing him will have an uncomfortable time at the crease. He has also adopted a rather interesting method of bowling, one that, in the main, involves peppering the batsman with the short, rising delivery.

It is a method he has embraced and it is one that has worked. Wagner recently grabbed 16 wickets in two games against the visiting Bangladeshi batsmen. Fifteen of those wickets came off the short ball. According to Mohammad Isam, writing in Cricinfo, 258 of the 313 balls he delivered during the series were short and rising.