Ian Leslie Pont never played international cricket for England. He had a powerful arm, could throw the ball at a distance of over 120 metres and went on to be a specialist coach for fast bowlers in the T20 era. While international cricket could never witness his skills with the ball, first-class cricket saw him bag 70 wickets in only 28 matches that he played for various counties. One of Pont’s innovations was a variation of a pacer’s delivery that much later went on to be named as the projapoti.
The way a bowler grips and releases the ball decides it’s movement. Whether the bowler was successful in hitting the seam to the pitch determines the direction of the ball that the bowler wishes the ball to travel to. But what if this movement of the ball becomes unpredictable not only for the batter, but also for the bowler? This is the projapoti.
Projapoti means butterfly in Bengali. Like a butterfly, when the ball’s movement is random and undetermined, the delivery is said to be successfully executed. It was named so after Bangladeshi player Rubel Hossain popularized this delivery in the 21st century.
To bowl a projapoti, there is no particular grip pattern. Bowlers are free to release the ball by any grip they find most comfortable with. The trick is to release it at a pace that the further movement on the ball can be imparted by the wind direction and the effect of the air surrounding it.
In close relation with the projapoti is another variation that gained prominence in the T20 era. This was called the knuckleball as the ball was gripped and released from the knuckles by the bowler. The knuckleball is a pacer’s flighted delivery that can be difficult to pick up by the batter after pitching. Compared to the projapoti, a knuckleball can take time to master as there is a particular grip pattern that the bowler has to master.
The projapoti is not a routinely used word by commentators. Even if one was to deduce the ball as a projapoti, they would simply get away by tagging the delivery as a slow ball. However, one must remember them not every slow ball is a projapoti.
