There was supposed to be a war of speed in Lucknow on Wednesday. Mohammed Shami, Mohsin Khan and Prince Yadav led the way for Lucknow Super Giants. They still had Mayank Yadav, a 150-plus wunderkind, and Naman Tiwary, a 20-year-old who can touch 145 kph, on the bench.

The pace of Delhi Capitals was also not less. Lungi Ngidi, Mukesh Kumar and T Natarajan formed their core, while Jammu and Kashmir sensation and Ranji Trophy winner Auqib Nabi waited in the wings.

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on red clay pitch Ikana Stadium was a perfect stage. The ball went into the air and out of the seam, making batting difficult. It would become even more difficult in the second innings when LSG started to unleash raw pace.

LSG vs DC, IPL 2026: highlighted | Achievement:

But that’s not what we came here for.

We are here for the slow ball. Lungi Ngidi’s slow ball, which is getting started Just like Jasprit Bumrah, it is an inevitability.

Like Bumrah, Ngidi’s smile also wins your heart. His slow ball does the opposite. This cheats. This is embarrassing.

slow for puran

On Wednesday, Nicholas Pooran, one of the best T20 batsmen in the game, was at the striker’s end. Ngidi was bowling his second over and had given 10 runs in his first over. Despite T Natarajan dismissing Ayush Badoni in the previous over, Axar Patel brought him back.

There was a clear plan: from Ngidi to Puran.

At the end of the eighth over, LSG were 57 for 3, having already lost Rishabh Pant, Aiden Markram and Badoni were sent to open. If Puran had stayed for five overs, the initial momentum would have slipped. Akshar knew this.

So Ngidi came back.

Mitchell Marsh hit him for a six on the third ball. He did not respond. Marsh took a single on the next ball.

Puran was on strike.

The slower ball came in. It almost felt like it never happened.

Ngidi’s hand came at full speed. His fingers worked from behind the ball. The speed gun recorded a speed of 112.3 kilometers per hour, which was more than 25 kilometers per hour slower than its stock delivery. Pooran appeared to have read the change in pace. He was waiting for this.

But as the ball moved forward, it hit an invisible wall. It declined rapidly at the last moment. Pooran’s weight shifted too early, his bat got caught in front and he was entangled as the ball slipped through the gap between bat and pad and shattered the stumps.

Ngidi smiled again.

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Puran was out after scoring 8 runs. LSG scored 141 runs in 18.4 overs. Ngidi took three wickets, including another slower ball which fell on a yorker length to dismiss Mohsin Khan.

With the help of Sameer Rizvi, Delhi recovered from the top-order faltering and chased the target in 17.1 overs. But that is another story.

This is that slow ball.

This is not new. Now everyone knows that Ngidi will bowl. Of his 24 balls, seven were slow balls. He bowled a similar ball to Abdul Samad in his next over. Samad survived. Puran did not.

This is the thing in this delivery. Knowing it’s coming doesn’t help.

like bumrah’s yorker

Ngidi’s slow balls are moving towards the status of Bumrah’s yorker. You expect them. You still can’t deal with them.

Ngidi leaned heavily on variations during the T20 World Cup. Five of his 12 wickets came on slow balls. He gave wickets at 7.19, which is second only to Bumrah among leading bowlers.

Bumrah also has a very slow ball. His hyperextension gives batsmen little time to choose length or pace, making even his traditional off-cutters more effective than others.

Ngidi’s approach is different.

It reflects Dwayne Bravo, one of the masters of the art, who relied less on surface hold and more on diving into the air.

This is not a coincidence. Ngidi learned the art from Bravo during his stint with Chennai Super Kings in 2018. What we see now is the result of years of repetition.

“I mentioned that he was the one who told me I had a good deceptive slower ball. And then I asked him, ‘How?’. He was willing to teach me. So, what you are seeing now is years of practice. It didn’t happen overnight, but I have been able to try it,” Ngidi told broadcasters after the wicket.

“I’m still not 100 percent. But it’s pretty close. I’m trying to emulate what he did and it’s working,” he said.

So, what is Ngidi slow ball?

Think about holding a wet, slippery bar of soap. If you want to throw it across the room at full speed, you hold it firmly in your palm and lock your wrist into it.

But what if you want to throw that same bar so that it barely travels a few feet, while your arm is still moving at full speed? You don’t slow down your hand. You change how the bar leaves your hand. You press it from behind with your fingers, so it slides off with much less force than your hand would suggest.

In short, that’s what Lungi Ngidi is doing with the cricket ball.

The Ngidi slow ball is a subtle evolution of the traditional off-cutter. Traditionally, an off-cutter is bowled by rotating the fingers over the top of the ball, like turning a door knob, creating friction and deflection off the surface.

But as Eric Simmons, who worked closely with Ngidi and studied Dwayne Bravo frame by frame, noted in The Indian Express, there is a key difference. In Ngidi’s version, the door handle is vertical. His fingers don’t move up. They follow the ball.

Former Indian fast bowler Irfan Pathan broke it on air on Wednesday.

That small adjustment changes everything.

By keeping his fingers behind the seam, Ngidi can maintain full arm speed, giving no visual cue to the batsman, no slowing of shoulder movement, no indication of what is coming. At the last moment the ball is pressed with the fingers.

The result is a dramatic drop in pace, often 25 to 30 kmph slower than his stock delivery, but more importantly, there is a change in how the ball behaves in the air. It doesn’t just slow down. It sinks.

It was that late collapse that disappointed Puran.

Dale Steyn put it best when he observed it closely.

“I think Nikki just fell. She may have even seen it and got into position quickly. I don’t know if her bat got stuck or not, but her entire weight fell. But to be honest, a lot of batsmen don’t see that ball from Ngidi, even if you know it’s coming. It’s very difficult to get the ball out of her hand. It’s too late. And Nikki P has to count herself as one of those guys. “Whoever he betrayed should,” he told ESPN.

Because the ball is released from behind rather than rolling, it holds its line longer before gravity and those vertical revolutions take over at the last moment. To the batsman, it appears like a full delivery which suddenly falls off the bat as soon as the shot is completed.

Skills + Sports Awareness

Ngidi emerged as a tall, hit-the-deck fast bowler for South Africa, built for Test cricket. Over time, he has developed into a more all-round T20 operator.

It’s not just skill that sets him apart. It is this awareness that you see in Bumrah.

This awareness was clearly visible on Wednesday. Early in the innings, he had a brief chat with wicketkeeper KL Rahul and felt that slower balls bowled at good lengths were not entertaining enough. The adjustment was immediate. He went all the way, trying to make the dip just below the batsman’s eye line rather than relying on the surface.

“I tried to use the big side. We know what kind of ball-striker he is. So, trying to do it in the air, not giving him any speed to work with, I think, that was the idea. It wasn’t really coming off the surface, so I tried to get the revs up and make the dip.

“I was chatting with KL to see what would happen outside the wicket if I changed the pace. I saw that there wasn’t much help on the length, so I was trying to get them in the air,” he said.

And then came the twist.

His favorite ball of the night was not Pooran’s.

It was a wide, yorker-length slower ball from Mohsin Khan. The most difficult variation to execute. On which he has worked the most.

It’s the ultimate paradox of T20: a friendly smile followed by cold, calculated cruelty. Batsmen, take note. That lunging slow ball that feels like it will never come is coming for you.

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