Bowlers in cricket showcase their skillset by the various ways in which they make the ball move. The movement of the ball, irrespective of them being spinners or pacers, also depends on the positioning of their fingers on the ball, the pace and the wind direction.
An innovative method of bowling is called projapoti. It is bowled by pace bowlers who don’t quite make an effort to move the bowl in any desired direction. Instead, the goal here is to let the wind direction and air affect the bowl’s direction when it is mid-air. This results in an untoward, unpredictable movement of the ball which becomes very difficult for the batter to read and pickup.
Bangladeshi bowler Rubel Hossain is credited for being the first to bowl the projapoti. The word projapoti means butterfly in Bengali. The name was thus meant to correspond the movement of the ball traveling through air to resembles that of the butterfly.
The projpoti is very similar to the knuckleball. As the name suggests, the bowl is released through the knuckles, which does not generate any additional movement on the ball. The flight of the ball bamboozles the batter, who more often than not, miscues the shot.
The difference between knuckleball and projapoti lies in the grip pattern on the ball. The latter does not have any specific grip, and can be customized to suit the manner in which the bowler intends to flight the ball.
Veteran English bowling coach Ian Pont is credited for developing the projapoti along with Hussain.
