Kyle Jamieson is quite the find: A tall, probing bowler who can make so much happen

SIMON HUGHES AT THE AGEAS BOWL: Jamieson can properly bend it both ways, as he proved with the wickets of Rohit Sharma and Ishant Sharma (outswing) and pinning Jasprit Bumrah lbw with a vicious inswinger

Report: New Zealand make a move in World Test Championship final

Day 3 Talking Points

Scorecard

Kyle Jamieson was a batter until he was 14. He was talked into transforming himself into a bowler by Dayle Hadlee, the great Sir Richard’s brother. It was a wise move.

For a start, there are very few highly successful batsmen who have been over 6ft 3in (Jamieson is 6ft 8in). Kevin Pietersen would be one, Tony Greig another. Nimbleness and fleetness of foot are vital for batters – certainly in the Test arena – and few really tall individuals have those assets.

For a bowler, however, exceptional height is ideal. It enables them to take wickets on the flattest of pitches, and makes them harder to score off. A good length ball tends to hit high up the bat. They are harder bowlers to dominate.

The one disadvantage of being exceptionally tall is more of their balls are rising over the stumps, denying them bowleds and lbws. They can also tend to enjoy seeing the ball flying through to the keeper head and end up bowling a shade too short.

There are two especially impressive things about Jamieson.

Firstly, his skill: few bowlers can genuinely swing the ball both ways, certainly not at above 80mph. Most have one direction of swing and then throw in an alternative which is either a scrambled seam delivery or what the New Zealanders call the “three-quarter” ball (holding the seam with middle along it rather than in between index and middle fingers).

^{Kyle Jamieson enjoyed an excellent third day at Southampton}

Jamieson can properly bend it both ways, as he proved with the wickets of Rohit Sharma and Ishant Sharma (outswing) and pinning Jasprit Bumrah lbw with a vicious inswinger.

But, secondly, he is also obviously a quick learner. He was a fraction too short on the second day, sending down a succession of deliveries which moved and lifted extravagantly but were easily left alone by the Indian batsmen.

On the third morning he bowled straighter and pitched the ball up half-a-yard, which is not always easy to do, especially for tall men who, obliged to leave their ‘back-of-a-length comfort zone’ are inclined to ‘float’ the ball onto a fuller length.

Andrew Caddick had a habit of doing this, as did Steven Finn and occasionally Chris Tremlett, among recent tall fast bowlers for England.

Not Jamieson.

After a couple of exploratory deliveries, he hit a probing fuller length, soon trapped Virat Kohli lbw and lured Rishabh Pant into a injudicious drive. These were the two wickets that New Zealand most craved, and they had both within 40 minutes of the restart.

It seriously trimmed Indian expectations and in the end they only just made it past 200. Jamieson’s 5 for 31 puts him into equal fourth place – behind Tom Hayward, CB Turner and Vernon Philander - with the most five-wicket hauls (in Jamieson’s case, five) in his first eight Tests – equal with other luminaries such as Sir Ian Botham, Ravichandran Ashwin and the legendary Frederick ‘the Demon’ Spofforth.

He is some discovery.

So is Devon Conway, who once again illustrated his compact defence and composed disposition at the crease, dealing unfussily with some hostile early overs (and some loud encouragement for the bowlers from Kohli & Co).

With the equally unflappable Tom Latham, he looked set to see New Zealand through to the close, until both fell late on to uncharacteristically loose drives. New Zealand had the better of the day, but it is one of those pitches, on which, if properly exploited, an innings can quickly be distabilized.