Be it Vernon Philander, Pat Cummins or James Pattinson, Doug Bracewell or Umesh Yadav, pace has dominated in the most recent Test series, says Andrew Alderson, writing in the New Zealand Herald. Subsequently, in the age of Twenty20, batting techniques look brittle.

Observations indicate pace bowling's resurgence could be a trend; at least in places where grass grows willingly. Evidence of pace bowling dominance has come with the wickets taken in the last five series. In the first test of the Australia-India series, quick bowlers took 88 per cent of the wickets; in the South Africa-Sri Lanka series up until the end of 2011, it was 76 per cent. The Australia-New Zealand series saw 80 per cent of the wickets fall to pace, whereas it was 83 per cent between South Africa and Australia.

... Perhaps the most telling example of the demise has been Rahul Dravid's recent lean trot. The batsman known as "The Wall" has looked more post-1989 Berlin than China against Australia, getting bowled three times in two tests, including between bat and pad twice ... Dravid is not alone among the world's batsmen. Blades of willow looked redundant at times in 2011 when you consider teams passed 400 runs in a test 24 times out of 141 innings (17 per cent). Added to that is the fact seven of those 24 innings came from the world's No1 team, England. Compare that to 2010 when teams scored 400-plus totals 45 times in 164 innings (27 per cent).

In The Hindu, S Ram Mahesh writes of how Craig McDermott has silently transformed the fortunes of Australia's pace attack by getting them to bowl fuller.

All around the world, bowlers of fast-medium pace and greater are starting to reclaim lost ground from batsmen, cricket's glory boys. The conditions have conspired, at least in England, South Africa, and Australia, and the seamers, like spotting that old pair of jeans in their closet that has returned to fashion, have found, to their delight, the fuller length.

In the Indian Express, Karthik Krishnaswamy looks back at the success fast bowlers have had at the WACA in Perth, and how certain batsmen have had their moments too. But with the pitch reportedlyt returning to its old menacing ways, he asks how Rohit Sharma, a debutant, will rise to the challenge.

The acronym, WACA, sounds like whacker. You almost expect to see it in the dictionary. Whacker: Noun; a bowler, made ten times as potent by the bounciest pitch in the world, liable to cause batsmen bodily harm with whacks to the chest, side, arms and head.

These are dark, barren times for fast bowling, says Osman Samiuddin, writing in the National.

The game does not immediately appear, especially to the outsider, an overtly taxing one physically. Those who do not follow suspect it to be soft, where players such as David Boon, Inzamam-ul-Haq and VVS Laxman - none ever to be mistaken for a top-class athlete - can prosper. This assessment is neither fair nor entirely accurate and the modern game places greater demands on fitness. But fast bowlers are what have always made cricket a truly physical, athletic pursuit.

The ICC's annual Test XI underlines one thing in particular: that bowling stocks are at a generational nadir, writes Barney Ronay in the blog The Spin in theGuardian.

The Spin is, of course, entirely unqualified to explain why this talent-drain should have taken effect. Some will say it is merely cyclical. Others will point to the de facto collapse, for various reasons, of two great Test bowling nations in West Indies and Pakistan. Perhaps there will even be those who suggest Test bowling is a refined art, one that rests on an acute and painstaking process of skill-refinement and the honing of a specific kind of fitness, something that is just much harder to achieve on the current multiformat treadmill.

Easiest of all would be to blame the decline of Test bowling on the lukewarm, generalist's skill-set of the sport's newest and shortest format, Twenty20. The Spin, naturally, would never stoop so low. Although it is worth noting that Bresnan is at least up for an entire award – Twenty20 International Performance of the Year – for his 3-10 against Pakistan last year, while Shane Watson is also in the mix for for scoring 59 (yes: 59) against England.

Cricket is in the midst of a bowling crisis, writes Richard Lord in The Wall Street Journal. Only England, and arguably South Africa, bowl as well as they bat, he suggests, a variety of factors - from the increasingly packed international schedule, to the rise of Twenty20 cricket, to the surfeit of lifeless pitches around the world - having come together to thin the ranks of quality seam bowlers, particularly in Tests.

There's a strong and understandable financial aspect to this. Professional cricket is a short career, for many there are limited prospects afterwards, and as a fast bowler, that entire career could end at any moment. So it's natural to follow the money, particularly when it's kinder on that fragile body. This is often seen as somehow mercenary and vaguely unsporting; in other words, the exact behavior that would be commended as laudable ambition in most careers gets condemned as disloyalty in sportsmen.