Cricket's Greatest Deliveries: The Ball of the Century and Beyond

What Makes a Delivery Great

A great delivery in cricket combines multiple factors: technical perfection in its execution, a batsman of standing dismissed by it, a meaningful context (World Cup, Ashes, Test career-ending), and often an element of apparent impossibility — the ball that did what physics suggested it should not. The greatest deliveries in cricket history are analysed and re-watched long after the match they occurred in is forgotten, because they represent the outer limit of what a bowler can do.

Shane Warne to Mike Gatting, Old Trafford 1993

Shane Warne's first ball in Ashes cricket — to Mike Gatting in the first Test at Old Trafford in June 1993 — is universally known as the Ball of the Century. Warne pitched the ball well outside leg stump. A watching Gatting prepared to pad it away, reasoning that no delivery pitched that far outside leg could hit the off stump. The ball drifted in the air toward leg, then spun sharply from outside leg to outside off stump, struck the off bail, and removed it. Gatting stood stunned. The replays showed the ball had turned approximately 60cm. It was, as the first Ashes ball Warne bowled in England, one of sport's most dramatic introductions.

Wasim Akram to Allan Lamb, 1992 World Cup Final

In the 1992 World Cup final between Pakistan and England in Melbourne, Pakistan needed wickets. Wasim Akram came around the wicket to Allan Lamb and bowled a reverse-swinging, full-length delivery that came back late, went through the gap between bat and pad, and removed the off stump. Lamb had watched the line of the ball and shaped to hit it to the off side. It was simply not where he expected it to be. Wasim has called it the best ball he ever bowled in a one-day match. It effectively ended England's chase.

Glenn McGrath to Mike Atherton, 1997 Ashes

Glenn McGrath bowled many great deliveries, but the series he bowled Mike Atherton over the course of the 1997 Ashes — dismissing him 19 times in 26 innings across an 18-month period — represents the sustained equivalent of a great delivery. McGrath's dismissal of Atherton at Edgbaston in 1997 — a perfect outswinger from the line of off stump that Atherton played at and edged — was replicated so consistently that McGrath's battle against England's opener became a statistical phenomenon. No bowler in history has dismissed a single batsman as consistently.

Muttiah Muralitharan's Doosra, Repeatedly

Muralitharan's doosra — the ball that looks like an off-break but turns the other way, away from a right-handed batsman — was so difficult to pick that batsmen often could not identify which direction it would go even after significant experience against him. The delivery that dismissed Kevin Pietersen for 158 in the third Test of England's tour of Sri Lanka in 2003 — on a good length just outside off stump, turning back into Pietersen through the gate — exemplifies what made Muralitharan's bowling historically rare: an off-spinner who could dismiss right-handers as readily as left-handers.

Curtly Ambrose to Graeme Smith, 2000

Curtly Ambrose's final Ashes series in 2000 provided multiple reminders of what he had been capable of across 15 years. But his dismissal of Steve Waugh in the same period — a ball that lifted sharply from a good length and took the shoulder of the bat — illustrated the principle that made Ambrose great: pace bowled from extreme height generates a bounce differential that no preparation can fully account for. The ball pitches on a good length but arrives at shoulder height, creating an impossible choice: duck and edge, or play and edge.

Jasprit Bumrah's Inswinging Yorker, Any Match

In the modern era, Jasprit Bumrah's inswinging yorker delivered from a wide of the crease position is the delivery most likely to be cited by contemporaries as unplayable. Because he bowls from wide of the crease with a chest-on delivery, the ball appears to be heading down leg side before swinging sharply back. The batsman's instinct is to move toward it. The result is an LBW or a bowled that appears to come from nowhere. Pat Cummins, who has faced Bumrah in international cricket and franchise tournaments, has described it as the delivery he least wants to face.