Sport loves speed. For a decade or so the world seemed to collectively lose its mind every time Usain Bolt took to the track. In baseball there are blog posts seeking advice for which radar gun to buy to track your son’s pitches in high school, the whole damn industry of motorsport is built around the worship of high speed.

So I want to take a moment to appreciate the opposite, I want to celebrate slow.

I’ve already written about baseball in my first post on here – so I will mention in passing the changeup, a pitch that has spent around a hundred or so years making batters look foolish.

The moment that I would like to use to exhibit the beauty of slowness, is Steve Harmison’s slower ball in the 2005 Ashes series (for those outside of the UK, that is cricket). Steve Harmison was nicknamed England’s “white West Indian” as his tall stature and 90mph bowling speeds evoked memories of the classic intimidating fast bowlers from the West Indies.

Harmison though has always been something of an enigma – when bowling at full speed he could be nigh on unplayable, but there was something about him that made a mockery of his nickname. He was far from the muscular bowling beasts that the West Indies produced – with a more gangling, lanky frame and an action that never got less odd to see.

But what he had going for him was pace. Pace that admittedly was often misdirected – pace for pace’s sake – in trying to fling down an opening ball of an over at his customary 90mph pace, he would often end up seeing the ball fly past the wicket keeper and off to the boundary.

So it still remains a cause for amazement for me that the most beautiful use of the slower ball is from this man that a Guardian article suggested “Run in and bowl fast,” Harmison should be told”.

Steve Harmison is possibly most famous for ball that sealed victory in the second test of the 2005 Ashes, but the moment I am celebrating here came at the end of the day preceding that most dramatic finish.

The final ball of the third day saw Michael Clarke set to launch an Australian push for victory the next day, having reached a quickfire 30 from 57 balls and key as their last recognised batsman.

Harmison had toiled away, without a wicket to his name yet.

With just 3 balls to go in the day, Harmison unleashed a piece of magic – trickery and deception, right out of the top drawer.

I think what makes a slower ball so satisfying is the schadenfreude inherent in the moment. I think we all feel something approaching empathy (even for Australian cricketers) when an unplayable fast ball goes flying past their best attempts, which detracts in some way from the jubilation in the moment.

But with a slower ball, it is the guilty pleasure of being complicit in a moment of utter deceit being played out before our eyes, giving us the opportunity to delight in seeing someone normally elevated well beyond our ken reduced to subterranean ego (if only for a moment).

The above clip has it all – the perfection of the cricketer’s prized middle stump, rocked back to an amusingly jaunty angle, the ungainly topple of the batsman as we wafts at nothing but air and the immediate look of “what just happened”.

Ultimately, sport comes down to moments of jeopardy, and whether or not one team or person emerges the other side on top or not. I believe this is what does separate out these times when slow wins out as special. Anyone would expect a 100mph pitch to overcome a batsman. But the ball from Harmison was clocked at 65mph. If Clarke had predicted that, he could well have sent the ball into the stands.

This is the risk that makes the reward so much sweeter and what makes going slow and coming out on top the sweetest.