Batsmen wait patiently to deliver the full ball to the long bowlers. They talk about the floatiness of these deliveries. When the ball is over-pitched, they go into attack mode.
Because of this, tall bowlers rarely pitch the ball. Instead, he remains at his best and keeps the batsman at the crease. The problem is you have to bowl fuller to get more swing. So throughout the history of cricket, you don't see bowlers swinging the ball consistently over 80 mph in Test cricket.
Today, Kyle Jamieson bowled very full, swinging the ball massively, touching 87mph/140kph, while delivering it from 2.3m which is 30cm more than a standard seam bowler. His Test bowling average is 14.13. It's a scary collection of skills in one person. If you were designing a creature to be a perfect seamer in the lab, it's pretty close to what you'd choose.
****
There have been many changes in the bowling style over the years. After the war, the most common form of delivery was the outswinger. It dominated cricket until the West Indies' seam bowling method came along.
And while the West Indies had quite a variety of bowlers, their fundamental skill was very simple: fast bowlers, who were tall, and who achieved something off the surface, not through the air. The thought process was that swing is fickle and may disappear. Fast and long your day will last.
The need for pace has changed what we see in bowlers. Speed and seam can go together, as Jasprit Bumrah, Pat Cummins and Kagiso Rabada have shown us. But some bowlers have made the ball spin at speed. And those who are left-armed, that is already an advantage, as it generally allows them to pitch higher. Or shorter and faster ones with full natural length.
It is not that the biggest bowlers cannot swing the ball. Rather, it is because their fuller balls are the easiest to handle, and they naturally have many other advantages, so they rarely develop the skill. Joel Garner, Glenn McGrath, Curtly Ambrose, Steven Finn and Morne Morkel could swing the ball occasionally, but their strength is hitting the track at length.
When you have longer bowlers swinging the ball, it is either just for a shorter duration or by bowling more slowly. Jason Holder in modern cricket is an example of this. His speed is significantly less than the faster than the traditional six-footer, and so he gets a consistent swing.
But Kyle Jamieson is faster than Holder, and he's certainly more than a bowler who can swing it only occasionally. He is a reasonably tall fast-medium consistent swing bowler. Test cricket has never really seen many of them. And he can swing it both ways, and can also show off his craft from all around the wicket. He has a magical toolbox. Jamieson is either an excellent mimic for someone who is late to the bowling, or a natural for the seam position.
And facing a player like Jamieson is already an added challenge. He is a faster bowler than most players of his stature, but it is difficult to pick up any bowler of his size. Australia used to call Morkel a monster because of his release point.
Test match batting is something you get good at by constantly practicing the same skills until you can filter the information quickly enough to face someone at 80 mph. Jamieson is so tall that his release point is much above average. He needs to make an adjustment which is not easy to do at his pace.
But that's only the first problem with his height; The second is the jump. Bowlers have a near-permanent tennis-ball bounce, at that height. If you've ever played cricket with both a tennis ball and a fair ball, you'll understand the difference between facing the two. Such balls require different shots. So this means that, in a way, the shots played by a long bowler should be different from the others. His stature makes the game different.
Now, add the swing.
****
Kyle Jamieson has the third best Test bowling average of any player with 40 wickets. If you exclude the pre-1900 bowlers, who did not get any assistance from the days before the use of liquid manure in pitch preparation, they are No.
Now we know he won't keep this average up. Apart from the very helpful people on social media who keep on pointing out that he hasn't played in Asia yet, Jamieson is no better than Malcolm Marshall at seven runs per wicket, the bowler with the lowest average of 200 wickets. For fun, the next two bowlers on this list are Garner and Ambrose, two other tall men.
Jamieson's first-class bowling average is 24.21 in 28 matches when he hasn't played Tests. There will be a regression to the mean. People will get used to it more; He hasn't bowled that much in his career so far, so with IPL and Test duty, he is going to get a workload that will take him away.
But it's an incredible start; And before you even take a look at his batting, in which he currently averages 47, which is higher than his first-class record of 21.
It has been a remarkable run of eight Tests. If it happened in the middle of one's career, it would be a highlight, the fact that it happened at the beginning is even more surprising.
****
So what does it all make when you mix it? Jamieson's only obvious weakness is that he is not a 90mph bowler. He's precise, swings it both ways, and delivers it to a comical height. Had he regularly exceeded 90mph/145kph, he would have achieved seam bowling prodigy.
In this Test so far, he has averaged a higher swing than everyone except Tim Southee. It's a weird thing to play against.
Look at his wickets in this match. Rohit Sharma was a simple outswinger who used to swing early and then go a long way to take the lead. Rishabh Pant's delivery was a rare bad ball, and an even more poorly executed shot - but one that was driven by extra bounce. Ishant Sharma faced off with angling at the stumps, swung before landing, and then hit a trampoline when it pitched. To follow it up, Jamieson starts a yorker for Bumrah, which comes well inside from outside the off-stump, as if there is a homing beacon on it.
And then came the delivery of Virat Kohli. It pitched outside the off-stump, went very straight, and then seamed back quickly. It was essentially an offspinner bowling 230mph at 85mph/138kph. I'm not sure how you play it. And apparently, neither is Kohli.
****
Think about this New Zealand attack. He has three of the best bowlers of all time, with 827 wickets between them. Three completely different styles of bowling that complement each other. He has traveled the world, propelling New Zealand to No. 1 in the rankings, and reaching the World Test Championship finals. And coming into this match, New Zealand had picked a spinner, perhaps either Trent Boult or Neil Wagner.
And while others are more experienced and tested, given the combination of all of Jamieson's skills and his recent record, his spot was clearly secure.
This is a great phase for the fast bowlers. People like Suranga Lakmal and Sharma have pulled in ridiculous numbers after many years of huge bowling averages. Since the start of 2018, there isn't a Test seamer with 50 wickets that has taken him for more than 30. Yet there are two, Ishant and Holder, less than 20. All these things should be taken into account, as of Jamieson, there are eight Tests being played between New Zealand and England.
But he averages less than 15 and is taking a wicket in every 36 balls. This is not normal, no matter what the circumstances.
And, it's not just about an incredibly easy combination of natural talent and skill. There are a lot of bowlers who come with a natural talent that works with their opponents time. That process slows them down, after which it's about how they adapt. Jamieson's late-game talks with the ICC team revealed that he recognized (relatively speaking) what he did wrong on Saturday and corrected it by bowling fuller on Sunday.
This is in his 36th first-class match someone who, having started bowling only a few years back, bowled an unusually full length by adjusting his length. This adjustment gave him his fifth five-wicket haul in seven-and-a-half Tests.
Kyle Jamieson has height, some speed, swing, seams, control and the ability to change his plans. He's not perfect, but if you're standing on the other end when the ball swings, it might feel like he is.