The short-ball plan costs more than the captain thinks it does

Bouncers buy wickets at a price paid later in the spell, in the series and in the bowler's lower back.

A batter is uncomfortable against the short ball, so the plan becomes short balls, and for two overs it is wonderful theatre. Then the field goes back, the bowler is three overs into an eight-over spell with his heart rate through the roof, and the batter starts pulling to a vacant square leg because there are only so many men you can put behind him.

Bowling short is the most physically expensive thing a fast bowler does. The delivery requires more force through the front leg, more trunk extension and a longer, harder follow-through, and the loads that concern medical staff, the ones associated with lumbar stress injuries, come from exactly that combination. A spell of bouncers is not the same workload as a spell of full deliveries with the same ball count, and the ball count is the number that goes on the spreadsheet.

Then there is the tactical price inside the innings. Every short ball needs protection behind square, which means fielders removed from catching positions. You cannot bowl a bouncer plan and hold three slips. So the delivery that might actually get the wicket, the full one afterwards, arrives with a field set for the previous idea, and the edge that follows drops safely into a gap somebody vacated four minutes earlier.

I am not arguing against the short ball. It is the only delivery that makes a set batter physically anxious, and the threat of it is what makes the full one work. The argument is about proportion. Two an over, bowled with intent, at a specific batter, with the field genuinely set for it, is a plan. Six an over on a slow low pitch because nothing else is happening is a captain out of ideas spending his best bowler's back to look busy.

Watch what happens in the twenty minutes after a bumper barrage. The bowler comes off, the pace has dropped two or three kilometres an hour, and it does not come back that day.

That is the receipt. It arrives late, which is why nobody reads it.