Derek Underwood
"Deadly" Derek Underwood was nominably a slow left-arm bowler, but his pace through the air was startling at times and, with the exception of his peerless Kent sidekick, the wicketkeeper Alan Knott, few players at the business end ever had the measure of his bottomless bag of tricks. He was at his most lethal on drying wickets in the days of uncovered pitches - witness his mopping-up of Australia at The Oval in 1968 - but he could adjust his pace and flight to suit any surface. He was a mystery spinner before anyone had even coined the term.
Lasith Malinga
"Slinger" Malinga honed his extraordinary round-arm style as a means of skidding tennis balls out of the surf on the beaches of his native Sri Lanka, and he's been bamboozling generations of batsmen throughout a long and storied career. In an era when opponents like to get "under the ball", via ramps, slogs and lofted drives, Malinga's almost subterranean line of attack instantly ups the ante, and few deliveries are more deadly than his low-slung wicket-to-wicket yorkers. He's the only player to have claimed three ODI hat-tricks, and even made it four in four balls against South Africa at the 2007 World Cup.
Share This Post