3 min learnMumbaiMar 26, 2026 09:24 AM IST
When Yuvraj Singh landed on the airport after the 2014 T20 World Cup last loss to Sri Lanka, he was abused. Quickly, stones had been thrown at his house. “I felt like I used to be a villain, a perpetrator, like anyone had shot anyone and was going to jail. I nonetheless keep in mind how I felt in that second,” he would recall years later.
A detailed sport was misplaced. Yuvraj, Virat Kohli, and MS Dhoni couldn’t end. The rationale was a supply.
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Lasith Malinga saved firing yorkers nicely exterior off stump. Yuvraj saved toe-ending them. Then got here Nuwan Kulasekara, who got here closest to the fashionable avatar of that ball. His deliveries skimmed the extensive line, particularly after he took out Yuvraj with a large full toss that sank into long-off’s palms. He started pinging that line to Kohli and Dhoni. Each tried to achieve out and drag it to the on-side. Neither may. Once they sliced it, a deep backward level and third man ensured there was only a single in it.
The visuals stick with you. Kohli banging his bat into the turf. Dhoni slipping and falling making an attempt to tug a ball from method exterior off. Two of the best finishers within the sport defeated not by tempo or swing, however by width.
It’s troublesome to say if that was the start of the well-outside-off yorker. But it surely was definitely its prime-time debut.
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A couple of years later, the supply started rearing its head within the IPL. From 2021, it took centre stage. Dwayne Bravo made it his personal, punctuating his bewilderingly dipping slower balls with these extensive yorkers. The remaining started to catch up.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar had 13 runs to defend in a last over in opposition to AB de Villiers. With 12 wanted from 4 and AB on strike, Bhuvneshwar saved firing them extensive. The fourth ball, he got here straighter — smashed for six. The opposite three had been all extensive, all three dot balls.
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That very same 12 months, Andre Russell made it his signature ball, with a twist — he delivered it from across the stumps. In a single memorable over, he tied down Kieron Pollard with it, then finally acquired his man, edging after making an attempt a wild shot, having walked throughout his stumps. Russell had tried it in earlier seasons, however not with this consistency. The kids adopted. Kartik Tyagi and Arshdeep Singh, who stopped a rampaging Sanju Samson that 12 months with this supply. “The sector was set, and the plan was to feed him extensive yorkers. If we may execute all of it six balls.” Arshdeep has saved his love affair with that ball since.
The candy irony arrived when Russell, who had virtually made the extensive yorker his personal, discovered himself thwarted by it. He would hold flinging his bat, however usually couldn’t put them away. Typically a supply finds its method again to the person who made it well-known.