The return of carnage

Fast bowlers wrecking havoc used to be one of those sights you'd have to visit archives for. You know: grainy, black-and-white and all that. But lately there's been a spurt in good fast bowling, with Harmison, Flintoff, Jones, Lee and Bond around now. All are high-quality, and suddenly what we're seeing is batsmen score a lot less. There haven't been so many good bowlers around for a long time. Today I bulletined the India-New Zealand game and was amazed by Bond's brilliant bowling. He took Ganguly apart completely, and the batsman had no idea what the heck was going on for seven of the eight balls he played. It was simply wonderful to watch and special to write about.