Josh Hazlewood is six feet five inches tall and has a high release point. Almost around 2.15 metres (nearly 7.05 feet), as per Sydney Morning Herald. Imagine the top of a giraffe’s neck, Shaquille O’Neal’s aura height or a pool table vertically standing – the cricket ball arrives from there. According to CricViz Hazlewood has the seventh highest point of release this century. The effect is whichever length he hits, he produces extra bounce. Almost every ball hits the top half of the bat, often cannoning onto the splice, a bit harder, a bit higher. He does so subtly, and not spectacularly, a matter of centimetres, and that often suffices.

The ball that nailed Virat Kohli was not too short, but it reared up at armpit height outside the off-stump and hit the upper half of his bat. The bounce shocked Kohli—but it was not a trick of the pitch. It owed its venom to the disposition of the bowler.

The bounce of Hazlewood had troubled Kohli in the past too. In their World Cup meeting at Chepauk, he hurried him to a miscued pull when on 3, but was dropped. Another mishit pull off Hazlewood ended his innings, but he had added 82 more runs. In 29 innings in all formats against the Australia’s menacing metronome, he has got out nine times, that is one in every three innings.

He loves tormenting India too—in 12 Tests in Australia, he has claimed 44 wickets at an average of 24. In the morning too, he was Australia’s most potent bowler, troubling India’s top order with pace, bounce, accuracy and away movement.

When he started his club career, though, his release point was not this high. He was more round arm in his release. So his coach John Muller went about remodelling his action to maximise the release point. He needed to bring his bowling arm closer to his body and the run-up needed to be slower. “I used to tell him don’t rush, gradually build up and then release the ball before following through. A bit like McGrath, well I try to teach a lot of kids that action. But Josh learned it pretty fast. That was one of his most impressive traits. He learned everything quite fast,” Muller once told this newspaper.

Little wonder that he even set school records for throws. When he was 12, he flung the shot put to a distance of 53.11, a state school record. Scouts at the New South Wales Institute of Sports came calling for him. But he refused the chance to focus on cricket. Hazlewood once admitted that he never took throwing seriously. “I was 12 when I first threw it. I went on through the levels at school and onto state CHS. I eventually ended up at the nationals and picked up a few gold medals there. It was good fun, I only did it for something to do in the winter and I loved the competition,” he told Sydney Morning Herald.