Exactly 30 years ago yesterday, Ian Botham – now Sir Ian, of course – first stepped on to the field in a Test match, at Trent Bridge. It was a typically understated entrance. Swinging the ball at pace, Botham took five Australian wickets for 74 in 20 overs of tease, confrontation and chutzpah.

So handsomely has the ball swung these past few weeks that Botham’s fingers must be itching for another game. But what has been happening this damp summer has been an aberration, a trip down memory lane for many cricketers of Botham’s generation, for whom the challenge of surviving – or exploiting – the swinging new ball was a daily ritual.

Over the past 30 years, swing bowling has worn nothing like as well as Sir Beefy. It has been largely driven into the ghettos of county and club cricket by a host of changes that have intimidated bowlers into a shorter length – what is called back of a length – that denies batsmen the chance of the hitting through the ball.

Covered pitches and the imperatives of one-day cricket have made the modern generation of batsmen unafraid of going hard at the ball, hence the desire of the bowler to hold the ball back.

It takes a bowler of nerve to pitch the ball on a fullish length in search of the swing that can win an lbw decision or a catch in the close cordon. Get it slightly wrong and he can expect to be driven through the covers.

It was a gamble worth taking in the old days, when there was generally more moisture in the pitches, more moisture in the air and the manufacture of cricket balls was a less exact science – if you got lucky, you’d get one that would swing round corners. “It was all in the ball,” said one former opening batsman by way of rationalising the lottery of life against the new red cherry.

These things go in and out of fashion, and swing bowling might be due a comeback. For the past 15 years or so the bio-mechanists, having swarmed into the game, told everyone how to bowl if they wanted to avoid injury and came up with the fronton action as the least bad option. But many fine swing bowlers, Botham included, generated their movement from delivering the ball from side-on.

That has been one obsession. Another is the demand for raw pace. Duncan Fletcher, for example, didn’t lie awake at night dreaming of beating the Aussies with 75mph swing bowling, but he seemed willing to pick anyone who could get it up towards 90mph, in whatever direction.

But generally the faster the ball travels, the less scope it has to swing in conventional fashion (as opposed to reverse swing, which tends to happen at higher speeds).

The problem with swing is that even in the hands of the best exponents, it is dependent on conditions. Some days the ball swings, some days it doesn’t. And in some countries it swings, and in others it doesn’t. If England is the home of swing, New Zealand, which has a very similar climate, and Sri Lanka, where humidity plays a part, have also nurtured some exceptional swing bowlers, among them Sir Richard Hadlee and Chaminda Vaas.

Some regions of India, too, are conducive to swing, which is why India boast a distinguished line in this department and why they often bring a clutch of swing bowlers, such as Zaheer Khan of the current crop, on tours of England. It is also why John Lever and Botham proved capable of winning Test matches for England in Delhi and Bombay.

Perhaps one of the reasons for England’s decline as a cricketing power in the 1980s and 1990s was linked to the general demise of the swing bowler during this period.

Whereas 30 years ago every county had a swing bowler who on his day could win a match, only a handful of them survive around the shires these days. The best of them – Matthew Hoggard, James Anderson and Ryan Sidebottom – learnt their trade in the less clement north.

Trent Bridge, where Sidebottom has developed his game since leaving Yorkshire in 2003, has played home to some of the best exponents of the art. In the 1980s Hadlee made Nottinghamshire virtually unbeatable there. He twice took more than 100 wickets in a season at about 14 runs apiece. For support he had another fine swing bowler, the underrated Kevin Cooper.

Another to enjoy Trent Bridge was Terry Alderman, who took 16 wickets there in two Tests during the 1980s, when he claimed a remarkable 83 wickets in 12 Ashes appearances in England by repeatedly hooping the ball through the air. Thirty of his victims fell leg-before. Alderman was never as effective elsewhere: his record in the Caribbean, where the ball barely swung, was a miserable five wickets at 94.6 apiece.

The transformation of many major grounds into modern stadiums over the past 20 years has also played its part in the decline of swing. The erection of large stands has, in many cases, removed the effect of breezes that helped make the swing bowler harder to negotiate.

It is no coincidence that Alderman, like Bob Massie – who took 16 England wickets at Lord’s in 1972 – learnt the game in Perth, where the breeze, known as the Fremantle Doctor, encouraged bowlers to strive for swing. The Melbourne Cricket Ground, by contrast, with its huge stands and swirlingly chaotic wind, makes swing bowling difficult. Richie Benaud recalls, too, that in the days before the Hill was replaced by a big stand, the ball would swing at Sydney.

But whatever the external conditions, you still need the talent to move the ball through the air. In the 1989 Ashes series England started the series with perhaps the best bowler they had at swinging the ball both ways, Worcestershire’s Phil Newport, but he was thoroughly outperformed by Alderman.

This summer’s Tests have posed an interesting test of batsmen for whom the moving ball is something of a novelty. Even the great Indian technicians, and Kevin Pietersen, who learnt the game in South Africa, where swing bowling has not been a prominent feature of the game for many years, have been exposed. So has Andrew Strauss, who has had trouble with Indian swing bowlers before.

When the ball is not moving, a batsman can pretty much stand his ground and play with impunity, but when it is swinging, he needs to be either well forward or well back, certainly not chasing the ball. How successful the batsmen have been can be measured by the 29 lbw verdicts given to the faster bowlers (up to the start of India’s innings yesterday) in little more than five Tests. Of these, nine were won by Sidebottom, a strike-rate that Botham – who won 81 lbws in his Test career– might well recognise.

Five great swing bowling performances

Bob Massie (Australia v England, Lord’s, 1972) Massie’s fi nest and virtually his only hour. The West Australian destroyed England with eight wickets in each innings but soon lost the ability to swing the ball. He played in only six Tests

Richard Hadlee (New Zealand v England, Trent Bridge, 1986) Returning to the patch on which he had won so many matches for Nottinghamshire, Hadlee gave a masterclass in swing bowling, taking 10 for 140

John Lever (England v India, Delhi, 1976) One of the finest left-arm swing bowlers the game has seen, Lever was a surprise selection for the tour at the age of 27. He stunned India with 10 wickets on his debut, but there were Indian whispers about him using Vaseline to shine the ball

Ian Botham (England v India, Bombay, 1980) Botham’s greatest all-round Test performance came in this one-off game in Bombay. He scored 114 and took 13 wickets, eight to catches at the wicket by Bob Taylor

India (World Cup fi nal, Lord’s 1983) India stunned the world by toppling the mighty West Indies in the fi nal of a tournament that nobody gave them a chance of winning. India struggled to post a big total in their innings and the tournament favourites looked to be on their way to a third title. But India won largely through swing bowling from Roger Binny and Madan Lal