The tennis-ball nights on dusty grounds in Delhi’s outskirts would seem like a different life for Prince Yadav. But the seamer from Najafgarh loves to recollect, with longing, the days that made him, and thanks them for the one vital attribute that’s central to his bowling. “I thank tennis-ball cricket for my arm speed,” he tells LSG’s website.

Tennis or tape-ball cricket quickens the arm-speed because the bowler has to rely entirely on air speed and yorkers to succeed. The taped or nylon-wrapped ball doesn’t bend in the air or move off the surface like a cricket ball. Yadav practised with a wet tennis ball, which was heavier, as it often got on dewy Delhi evenings. “It helped me deal with real match situations when playing with the tennis ball. The aim was to bowl yorkers as fast as I could, bend your back and just go full on,” he says in the video.

The deadliest exponents of the yorker had tennis or tape-balled forebears.…