Ngidi's Dropper
Lungi Ngidi and the one that dips
Here was something of which they had never heard of, for which they had never prepared, and which was unlike anything in the history of cricket. - The Story of Spedegue’s Dropper (Arthur Conan Doyle).
Lungi Ngidi has the same question at the death. He takes the pace away from his deliveries and asks them to muscle them over the in field and the boundary. The Proteas pacer has done this so often that know what to expect.
So, Romario Shepherd knew what was coming when he saw Ngidi at the top of his mark at the start of the 19th over. The West Indies all-rounder was on a roll. He had looked unbothered as he carted South Africa’s bowlers around the park on his way to 46 from 33 balls.
Shepherd, who came into the match with an average of 29 at a strike rate of 172.78 of at the death, was ready for Ngidi’s off-pace deliveries. Or so he thought. Shepherd wanted to go big, but his bat only scythed the Ahmedabad air as ball dipped earlier than he expected.
The second one behaved like a car that had just been suddenly swallowed by a sinkhole. The first ball of the over was 116kmh, this one was slower, travelling at 113kmh. It dipped just outside Shepherd’s hitting arc. Like the first one, the West Indian hadn’t read it and his bat made contact with the Ahmedabad air.
The third one left Shepherd, Jason Holder, Quinton de Kock, and anyone close to the crease smiling. Ngidi held his line outside the line of the off-stump. Shepherd read it as a full toss and tried to whack it. As with the first two, the ball dipped beneath Shepherd’s bat swing.
Franklyn Stephenson’s teams asked him to bowl so many overs it was easy to think of him as their one-man bowling attack. One time, his side enacted a policy that they would play only one overseas player - that season, Stephenson featured in 18 of his team’s 20 first-class matches. He missed the other two because of injury.
To cope with the workload, started bowling spin in some of his overs. Somewhere along the line, Stephenson realised he could use some of the offspin skills and actually come around the ball and bowl it like a massive cutter. And that would slow it down. And from there we have the off-cutting slower ball.
When he was young, Lungi Ngidi was a menace with the ball. In one match, he bounced a St Stithians batter to the hospital and almost broke the arm of another. Ngidi, who bowled like his West Indies heroes, developed a reputation for rushing batters and bowling aggressive lengths. That’s who he was when he made Proteas debut.
Then the problems started. He suffered hip, abdominal, and hamstring injuries. Ngidi also struggled with a stress fracture, side strains and knee niggles. His career appeared to be stalling. His defining skill was speed. Unfortunately, his body’s frequent breakdowns did allow him to lean on that.
Ngidi’s top speed is around 142-143km/h. He can deliver six balls at that speed, but won’t, because doing so would mean that he wouldn’t be able to bowl another delivery in the match. He would probably need to spend a bit of time in rehab too.
“I asked myself: what did I want my career to look like on the day I retire? What formats would I be playing? I also asked myself how I would like to fit into the team structure? You know, what would my role be within the squads that I was in? I told myself that I want to play all three formats for South Africa, and want to be known as a bowler who could play from Test cricket to T20,” he told me when we sat down for a chat.
Like Stephenson, self-preservation led Ngidi onto a path of discovery. Ngidi developed a variety of slower-ball deliveries that range from cutters to knuckle balls that he now summons at will with great efficiency. When South Africa faced India in their Super 8 match at the 2026 T20 World Cup, 16 of the 24 balls Ngidi delivered were slower balls. He did not concede a boundary in that match.
One of his greatest weapons is his large variation in speed. Ngidi can follow a 140kmh ball with a 112kmh delivery with ease. This allows him to undo batters with his version of the two-card monte, or in this case, a two-ball monte. That’s how he set David Wiese up on his way to a hattrick in the SA20.
Ngidi showed Wiese the pace on delivery on the first ball of the 18th over, then followed it with the slower one, which the all-rounder obligingly sent straight to the fielder at long-on. The next two victims, Sunil Narine and Gerald Coetzee, didn’t need an elaborate set up, Ngidi just needed to bowled in the right channel.
However, Ngidi’s best delivery is the one that dips. The one that he first tried out in the IPL in 2021. His attempt was so successful that he trapped Dinesh Karthik lbw on the first try.
“I was at the IPL for CSK in 2018 with Dwayne Bravo, and that entire IPL, the slower ones is the only thing I worked on. I wasn’t playing, so I got time to practice it. And then when I got back to South Africa, I just tried to perfect that ball,” Ngidi shared.
The delivery is a version of Stephenson’s moon-ball that had batters ducking thinking it was a beamer, before it dipped sharply and cannoned onto the stumps. Bravo, who made a name for himself as one of the best slower-ball bowlers, refined Stephenson’s moon-ball. It didn’t have the height of Stephenson’s ball, but had the same effect, it dipped sharply and bamboozled batters.
“It goes above your eyeline and the brain subconsciously thinks it’s a full toss, which means that you get into a different position and then it drops on you way before you think it is going to do so,” Jarrod Kimber explained when I asked him why it was so effective.
Like Bravo, Ngidi spins it out between his thumb and index fingers, thereby putting a lot of revolutions on the ball. The revs give the ball the dramatic drop that bamboozles many batters. It is, in some ways, fast spin bowling. After all, it is a delivery born from that craft.
In 1989, John Hardie, the Essex opener, ducked one of Stephenson’s moon-balls. It pitched outside the line of the off stump, turned about one-and-a-half feet and hit off stump.
“The ball goes up and then comes down; that’s what a great spinner will do. Then, because he is putting so many revolutions on the ball, when it bounces, it can come back into the batter,” Kimber explained further.
Despite it being wildly effective, it’s still a hittable delivery, like all others in cricket. What matters is backing it and executing it well, like what Stephenson did in a match against Lancashire. He bowled six consecutive slower balls, conceded one run, and got a wicket.
Ngidi often takes a leaf out of Stephenson’s book. Most batters know when he is sending the slower ones, and can prepare themselves for it, like Shivam Dube in the Super 8 match against India. But because Ngidi backs his execution, he often wins the day.
Barring the one delivery that pitched short and was struck for a boundary, while bowling to Romario Shepherd in the 18th over of their, Ngidi’s execution was spot on. He conceded only five runs in the over. That was also the over that slowed down the West Indies’ pair of Shepherd and Jason Holder.