It was supposed to be a battle of pace in Lucknow on Wednesday. Mohammed Shami, Mohsin Khan and Prince Yadav led the charge for Lucknow Super Giants. They still had Mayank Yadav, a 150+ wonder man, and Naman Tiwari, a 20-year-old who can hit 145 kmph, still on the bench.
The Delhi Capitals weren’t up to speed either. Lungi Ngidi, Mukesh Kumar and T Natarajan formed their core, while J&K sensation and Ranji Trophy winner Auqib Nabi waited in the wings.
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Playground with red soil Ekana Stadium was the perfect stage. The ball was moving in the air and off the seam, making the batting rough. It would only tighten in the second innings, when LSG unleashed a raw pace.
LSG vs DC, IPL 2026: MAIN | SCORECARD
But that’s not what we’re here for.
We are here for the slower ball. Lungi Ngidi slower ball that starts they carry the same inevitability as Jasprit Bumrah.
Ngidi played a key role in DC limiting LSG below par. (Photo: PTI)
Ngidi, like Bumrah, wears a smile that wins you over. His slower ball does the opposite. That’s lying. It’s embarrassing.
THE SLOWER UNTIL PORAN
Nicholas Pooran, one of the best T20 batsmen in the game, was at the striker’s end on Wednesday. Ngidi was in his second match having conceded 10 in his first. Axar Patel brought him back despite T Natarajan striking in the previous over to remove Ayush Badoni.
The plan was clear: Ngidi to Pooran.
LSG were 57 for 3 at the end of the eighth over, having already lost Rishabh Pant, who was sent to open, Aiden Markram and Badoni. Had Pooran stayed at five overs, the early momentum would have collapsed. Axar knew that.
So Ngidi came back.
Mitchell Marsh hits him for a six off the third ball. He didn’t respond. Marsh took the next ball.
Pooran was on strike.
A slower ball came. It was almost like never.
Ngidi’s arm came through at full speed. His fingers worked from behind the ball. The speed gun recorded a speed of 112.3 km/h, more than 25 km/h slower than its stock. Pooran seemed to understand the change of pace. He was waiting for it.
But as the ball traveled, it hit an invisible wall. It plummeted at the last minute. Pooran’s weight went forward too soon, his bat got stuck in front and he was left tangled as the ball slipped through the gap between bat and pad and smashed the stumps.
Ngidi smiled again.
Watch the video here:
Pooran was gone for 8. LSG were bowled out for 141 in 18.4 overs. Ngidi finished with three wickets, including another slower ball that dipped to yorker length and dismissed Mohsin Khan.
Delhi would recover from a top-order wobble to chase down the target in 17.1 overs, powered by Sameer Rizvi. But that’s another story.
This one belongs to the slower ball.
it’s not new. Everyone now knows that Ngidi will play it. Seven of his 24 deliveries were slower balls. In his next over, he bowled a similar game to Abdul Samad. Samad survived. Pooran doesn’t.
That’s the thing about this van. Knowing it’s coming doesn’t help.
LIKE BUMRAH’S YORKERS
Ngidi’s slower balls are slowly approaching the status of Bumrah’s yorkers. You expect them. You still can’t deal with them.
Ngidi leaned heavily into the variation during the T20 World Cup. Five of his 12 wickets have been off the slower side. He conceded 7.19, second only to Bumrah among the leading bowlers.
Bumrah also has a formidable slower ball. His hyperextension gives batsmen very little time to pick length or pace, making even his conventional cutters more effective than most.
Ngidi’s method is different.
It carries shades of Dwayne Bravo, one of the masters of the art that relied less on grip above the surface and more on diving into the air.
It’s not a coincidence. Ngidi learned the craft 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 that I had a good deceptive slower ball. And then I asked him ‘how?’. He was willing to teach me. So what you see now is years of practice. It didn’t happen overnight but I was able to try,” Ngidi told TV stations after the wicket.
“I’m not 100 percent yet. But it’s pretty close. I’m trying to emulate what he used to do and it’s working,” he said.
SO WHAT IS NGIDI SLOWER BALL?
Imagine holding a wet, slippery bar of soap. If you want to throw it around the room at full speed, grip it firmly in your palm and snap your wrist.
But what if you want to throw the same pole so that it travels barely a few feet while your arm is still moving at full speed? You don’t slow down your arm. You change the way the bar leaves your hand. You squeeze it with your fingertips from behind so it slides out with far less force than your arm suggests.
This is basically what Lungi Ngidi does with the cricket ball.
The slower Ngidi ball is a subtle evolution of the traditional cutter. Conventionally, the cutter is mixed by rolling your fingers over the top of the ball, like turning a door handle, which creates friction and deflection from the surface.
But as Eric Simons, who worked closely with Ngidi and studied Dwayne Bravo frame by frame, pointed out to The Indian Express, there is a fundamental difference. In the Ngidi version, the handle is vertical. His fingers don’t roll over the top. They move around the back of the ball.
Former India fast bowler Irfan Pathan broke it down on air on Wednesday.
That little adjustment makes all the difference.
With his fingers positioned behind the seam, Ngidi can maintain full arm speed, offering the batsman no visual cue, no shoulder deceleration, nothing to indicate what’s coming. The ball is pushed out with the fingertips at the last moment. Full breakdown of Ngidi’s slower ball technique.
The result is a dramatic drop in pace, often 25 to 30 km/h slower than his stock, but more importantly, a change in the behavior of the ball in the air. It doesn’t just slow down. He dives in.
That late drop is what chopped Pooran.
Dale Steyn, watching closely, summed it up best.
“I think Nikki just went down. Maybe he even saw it and got into position early. I don’t know if his bat got stuck, but his whole weight went down. But to be honest, a lot of batsmen don’t see that ball from Ngidi, even though you know it’s coming. It’s so hard to pick it out. It’s so late. And Nikki P should consider himself one of the ESPN guys.”
Since the ball is released from behind rather than rolled across, it holds its line longer than gravity and that vertical spin takes over at the last moment. To the batsman, it looks like a full delivery that suddenly dives under the bat just as the shot is completed.
SKILL + GAMES
Ngidi burst onto the scene as a tall, fast bowler for South Africa, built for Test cricket. Over time he developed into a far more rounded T20 operator.
It’s not just skill that separates him. It is awareness, the kind you see in Bumrah.
On Wednesday, that awareness was evident. At the start of the innings, he had a brief chat with wicketkeeper KL Rahul and realized that the slower balls on a good length were not getting enough grip. The adjustment was immediate. It was fuller, rather than relying on the surface, it created a dip just below the batter’s eye line. 3/27 in 3.4 overs, Lungi Ngidi takes a strike out and out with the ball. (Photo: PTI)
“I was trying to use the bigger side. We know what type of shooter he is. So not giving him any pace to work with, trying to do it in the air, I think that was the idea. It wasn’t really shutting down the surface, so I was trying to get the spin and create a drop.”
“I had a chat with KL to see what would happen off the wicket if I changed the pace. I could see that the length didn’t help me much, so I tried to do them in the air,” he said.
And then came the twist.
His favorite ball of the evening was not Pooran’s.
It was that wide, yorker, slower ball for Mohsin Khan. The most difficult version of the design. The one he worked on the most.
It’s the ultimate contradiction of T20: a friendly smile followed by cold, calculated cruelty. Batters, take note. That Lungi slower ball, the one that feels like it might never arrive, is coming for you.
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Issued by:
Debodinna Chakraborty
Published on:
02 Apr 2026 07:45 IST
