- Bowlers like Younis and Malinga were deadly with their yorkers.
- The risks involved with bowling yorkers saw them eased out slowly.
- The delivery has made a comeback in modern cricket in recent years.
Yorkers have been considered a lethal weapon in cricket since time immemorial. A yorker is a delivery that is bowled right at the batter’s feet, landing either at or around the popping crease. This length makes it incredibly difficult to play.
Oxford dictionaries claim that the word itself is derived from the fact that players from York bowled them so often. Other theories suggest that it could trace its origins to the middle English word “yeurke”, meaning to trick or to deceive.
Over the years, yorkers have provided the cricket world with images of stumps flying, satisfying fans of fast bowling for the longest time. Bowlers like Waqar Younis, Darren Gough and Lasith Malinga were particularly lethal with the delivery.
With time, however, yorkers weren’t quite as common as they used to once be.
Why did they go away for a while?
The yorker was seen as a mighty useful tool to stem the flow of runs. It has also regularly been used to breach the batters’ defences with them rooted to the crease. The delivery itself was always very difficult to execute, however.
With the advancement of batting towards a much more aggressive approach in recent years, the margin of error only gets smaller. Land the ball in the slot, and the ball disappears anywhere between long off and midwicket. Bowl a full toss, and that could well be deposited in the stands too.
With the bowling becoming a defensive art form, especially in the shorter formats of the game, the risk meant that the yorkers slowly went away. While this meant the wickets dried up, leaking runs just wasn’t worth it.
Return of the yorkers
The last couple of years have seen a bit of a buck in the general trend, however. Bowlers like Mitchell Starc and Jasprit Bumrah have been excellent practitioners of the art of bowling a yorker over the years. Now, the likes of Avesh Khan and Bhuvneshwar Kumar have also developed it a little more in recent times.
IPL 2026 is probably the best indicator, though, of just how successful yorker bowling can be. Kumar, Josh Hazlewood and Rasikh Salam have all mastered the usage of the yorker this season.
In turn, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, the IPL team that the trio play for, find themselves on top of the table going into the business end of the tournament. They’ve also been among the best death-bowling sides this campaign alongside KKR and SRH.
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