Top of off stump is lazy advice in most conditions

The most repeated instruction in seam bowling assumes a bounce and a batter that the venue in front of you may not provide.

Bowl top of off. It gets said in every commentary box, every coaching session and every dressing room, and it has the reassuring quality of sounding like a fundamental. Hit that spot often enough and the batter has to play, the edge comes eventually, the stumps are in the game.

The instruction has an assumption buried inside it that almost nobody states: that a ball pitching on a good length will arrive at the batter around the top of the stumps.

That is a bounce assumption, and bounce varies enormously. On a low, slow surface where the ball comes through at thigh height, that same good length is a comfortable ball to play off the back foot or to work through the leg side, and a bowler who keeps hitting it will bowl twenty tidy, harmless overs. On a hard, bouncy surface the same length arrives at chest height and is neither full enough to bring the stumps in nor short enough to threaten the batter, which is the definition of a comfortable length to leave.

Good bowlers adjust within an over on those surfaces. They pitch it fuller on the low one to threaten the stumps and the pads, because on a surface with no carry the front-foot lbw is the primary weapon and the outside edge barely exists. On the bouncy one they either go fuller still to force a drive or use the length that gets the ball at rib height, and the difference between those two options is a matter of what the batter is doing rather than what the pitch is doing.

The batter matters as much as the venue. A tall player picks a different length as attackable than a short one. A player who is strong square of the wicket wants width and a player who drives beautifully wants you full, and the correct length against them is not a fixed spot on the pitch. It is wherever their favourite shot stops being available.

Consistency is still a virtue. I am not arguing for a bowler who sprays it around trying to be clever, which is the usual overreaction.

I am arguing that consistency should be to a plan you chose after watching the ball bounce twice, not to a phrase you inherited from somebody who last bowled on a green English seamer in April.