In that same year I had been working on a slower ball delivered from the side of the hand. I would squeeze the ball between my middle finger and ring finger, roll my middle finger down the inside of the ball and it would loop up, all whilst keeping my arm speed the same. That was the plan, anyway.
It is a hard delivery to control and I was a player who liked to feel in control of what I was doing all the time. The unknown of letting a ball come out the side of my hand made me nervous.
I worried about it in my sleep, but McCullum made it sound so simple. He fully backed me trying the ball in a game and reinforced the point that he didn’t care what happened.
The first time I tried it in a game was against Gloucestershire at Uxbridge. McCullum had actually left by this point in the season, but had been on at me throughout the competition to try the new slower ball.
I bowled the slower ball in to the pitch and the batter was through the shot way too early. The next ball I bowled a pace-on shorter ball and the batter was caught behind off the glove.
It was the previous delivery that planted the seed of doubt in the batters’ mind about whether it could be a slower ball or not, and it got me the wicket. I took 4-24 to be player of the match.
It’s not that McCullum doesn’t care about the outcome. He does, passionately. But, having played the game, he knows that you have far more chance of succeeding and committing to what you are doing if you are relaxed. This is the basic premise of his coaching, one that will suit Buttler and this England team.