The curveball: A Pakistan special, this - which brings up a tangential point. Isn't it interesting that some of the greatest innovations in pace bowling are coming from Pakistan, where the wickets are if possible deader than in India?

In India, the local fast bowler on a batsman's track tends to just give up. In print he laments the unavailability of fast wickets on which to practise and ply his trade, and just goes through the motions. In Pakistan, however, the bowlers - beginning with Sarfaraz Nawaz, and continuing through Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Aaqib Jaaved, and now Mohammad Akram - have preferred to find new weapons. No coincidence, perhaps, that with the wickets proving lifeless, the Pak bowlers have started using techiniques that use the flight of the ball, rather than movement off the wicket, to gain most of their successes.

Back to the curveball - which, in its aspect, resembles the baseball pitch where the pitcher aims into the batter's body, the ball shooting in fast, curving with the natural movement of the pitcher's arm and dipping a shade just at the very last moment.

Imagine batting to this one. You pick the length, realise it is a full toss. Pick the line, on off and middle stump. Draw away a shade to hit it through extra cover, or move into line to swing over midwicket. Get your bat horizontal - and then discover, at the very last moment, that the ball is dipping, that your bat is on a higher line, and watch in dismay as the ball crashes below it and on to the stumps.

Waqar and Wasim have been reluctant to reveal how precisely they bowl this ball. But Richie Benaud and Ian Chappell, two Australian Test captains turned commentators, are unanimous that the inspiration comes from baseball. "Waqar's fast dipping full toss is basically the in-curver in baseball," Benaud explains. And it is bowled with index finger on the seam, second finger next to it and close, the bowler bowling from very close to the stumps, his shoulder falling away at the point of delivery so that the line is essentially an arc, beginning from off stump, curving away outside off and then straightening again towards the second half of its flight - the curve coming from the shoulder dip and the locked arm and wrist at point of delivery.