Zaheer Khan was roundly booed by Indian supporters at the MCG for the flurry of no-balls but apparently there was a reason for his extra effort.
Zaheer was working on the bowling tips by the Pakistani legend Wasim Akram who had asked him to completely redo his bowling style for the present tour of Australia.
Akram had advised Zaheer to understand that his method of swinging the delivery, as he did so brilliantly in England this summer, would not work in Australia.
"It wouldn't help if he was to just come and release the delivery in Australia as he did in England. There is a different method to obtain swing in this part of the world", Akram said.
Zaheer was asked to run in quicker than he normally does and instead of just releasing the ball, he should look to hit the deck on Australian pitches.
Zaheer worked on the advice and turned in a brilliant performance at the MCG in both the innings, never mind there were a dozen no-balls in Australia's second innings.
Even though he grabbed just a wicket in Australia's second innings, he troubled all Australian batsmen as he had done during his four-wicket haul in the first innings.
The only trouble was that in order to run-in and hit the crease hard, Zaheer was overstepping time and again.
One such transgression cost him the wicket of Andrew Symonds. The hefty all-rounder was bowled but much to Zaheer's disappointment, the right arm of umpire Billy Bowden was already stretched out in a signal for no-ball.
"When you bowl with the old ball, trying to gain reverse swing, you tend to overstep; that's common," said Akram.
"I like the way he has bowled in this Test though I would like him to keep switching on either side of the wicket, lest a batsman gets used to his style of bowling".
Akram's pearls of wisdom did not stop here. He also gave tips to Zaheer on how to hide the ball away from the gaze of batsmen when trying to reverse swing it.
Akram wanted Zaheer to hold the ball in his right hand and then switch it to his bowling left-arm in the final strides of his run-up.
Earlier, Zaheer used to keep the ball in his left palm before delivering it at the batsmen.
Akram also paid attention to the bowling style of Rudra Pratap Singh, another left-arm bowler like him and Zaheer, and asked him to try and bowl a lot from the edge of the crease.
He told RP Singh it would help him make batsmen play the wrong line.
"By bowling from the edge of the crease, it would fool a batsman into believing that the ball might angle away. But RP has an action which naturally brings the ball in. It can confuse a batsman," Akram said.
Even though the pacers did not quite get bagful of wickets in Australia's two innings, it's fair to say that there were periods of play when they kept the batsmen on a leash.
