Haris Rauf has a look and no respect for physics

2 minute read

Haris Rauf looks tired. Not sleepy tired. The kind of tired where you have no patience for anything. The kind of tired where if you say the wrong thing he will very quickly go from quiet and reserved to absolutely going off his head at you in a highly terrifying way.

Like many Pakistan quicks down the years, Rauf is a bowler where sometimes you hit him and sometimes he hits you.

Haris Rauf is quick.

We have watched Rauf’s dismissal of Olly Stone in the fourth T20 several times and we still can’t quite get our head around it.

There’s definitely a disorienting camera zoom in play, but there’s definitely also a very fast moving cricket ball in play.

To recap the situation, Liam Dawson had just pilfered 24 runs off the 18th over and had then hit Rauf’s second ball in the 19th over for four. This left England needing five runs in 10 balls with three wickets in hand.

Rauf promptly bowled much the same ball that had just been hit for four, only slightly quicker, to dismiss Dawson. He then bowled the physics defying ball to Stone.

Balls that seem to defy physics usually spin or seam or swing. We’re not sure this one really did much at all. We think all that happened was that Haris Rauf bowled the ball into off stump.

In a way, it was a beautifully matter-of-fact dismissal. In another way, each time we watch it we feel slightly unsettled by how the ball has already hit the stumps.

Even in the knowledge that we are watching a delivery we know will hit the stumps and even having seen that delivery many times before, the ball still somehow outpaces us.

This is what can happen when you prod a person who’s a particular kind of tired.

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