Lasith Malinga's flickering threat and its possible causes

Lasith Malinga’s flickering threat and its possible causes: The Sri Lankan missile, Lasith Malinga, once known for his sheer destructive capabilities, is now turning into an old fox of the team with lessened destructive instincts. To focus on the shorter formats of the game, Malinga announced his retirement from Test Cricket right in 2010 and has been a predominant wicket taking bowler for Sri Lanka in the shorter formats.

After the retirement of Chaminda Vaas, someone had to step up to retain the fast bowling legacy of Sri Lanka and undoubtedly, it was none other than the man with an unorthodox bowling stance, Lasith Malinga. Bowling in the late 140 kmph and with a consistent line and length, Malinga stood to be one of the most dangerous bowlers of World Cricket. There was a time when in ODIs or T20s, the opposition had the mind set of simply playing Malinga’s quota of overs without bothering much for the scoring rate, and looked to preserve wickets.

Well, this was the genre of him. And his varieties in bowling, the slower ones, the faster ones, the Slingers (Yorkers), the slower low full tosses and many more were in the bucket of Malinga’s stock. This made him much more prone to be an intensified and a dangerous bowler. But for the past one year or so, we witnessed a rather unexpected dip in his performance graph.

Well, this might be the result of a number of reasons. Firstly, after being inflicted from a number of injuries, Malinga had to shorten his run up a bit and that has resulted in slowing down his pace by around 10 kmph at an average. Well, this figure might not seem big enough. But according to the perspectives of the game, such dip in pace is enough to make an unplayable delivery into an easy picking for the batsman.

Also, in the modern day with the advancement of technology, a bowler’s action can easily be monitored and thus Malinga’s slower deliveries could easily be predicted by watching the way he grips the ball for that particular ball. In addition to it, Malinga’s line and length has not been that consistent in the recent past and he has been conceding quite a few extras. In addition to it, his Yorkers have become quite much predictable in nature and this resulted in a considerable dip as well.

The Yorkers which he used to bowl at around 145+ kmph did pose considerable amount of threat for the batsmen but now, due to a reduced pace, Malinga hasn’t been as effective as a bowler and failed to pose the threats which he is known for.

Now, these factors coupled to demean Malinga’s stature as a destructive bowler. Even in the World Cup of 2015, Malinga was not that effective and this resulted in Sri Lanka’s exit from the World Cup in the Quarter Final stages. Also, in the ODI series against Pakistan, he couldn’t manage to pose much of a danger and was way too expensive. This only happens when a genuine fast bowler loses his length, the spot of accuracy which differentiates a good bowler from the ordinary it becomes rather too easy for the batsmen to hammer him. And thus, Malinga, in addition his reduced potential of to taking wickets, has also been taken apart by the batsmen.

We are witnessing the period of struggle of the 32-year old right arm fast bowler, the master of 287 ODI wickets. This is never a good sign for any fast bowler and this might well result in fading his cricketing triumphant career in quite an undeserving fashion. Things are to go worse if Malinga is unable to find his pace and length in the games to follow.