The ball that captures the devastating essence of the slower ball in this era is arguably not the slower ball itself. But Josh Hazlewood’s fake slower ball — the bluff of a bluff. The variety is beguiling: the door-knobbed floaters of Jasprit Bumrah ; the knuckled stingers of Bhuvneshwar Kumar; the devil-fingered dippers of Lungi Ngidi; the spongy-bounced cheats from the back of Ashok Sharma’s palms. The origin stories are many, like medieval myths, but the most verified involves a strapping quick from Barbados, fatigue and a Eureka moment. In the early 80s, when West Indies cricket was at its peak, Franklyn Stephenson, an ambitious fast bowler from a quiet parish in Barbados packed his bags to the Lancashire leagues, dreaming of playing for West Indies one day. But Lancashire was not what he’d imagined. “I had to make money,” he tells The Indian Express . “For that I had to play as many games as possible.” Weekend, weekday — it didn’t matter. “Then, I got tired,” he says with a shrill chuckle.…