Custom Bats Cricket Forum
General Cricket => Cricket Training, Fitness and Injuries => Topic started by: Buzz on May 09, 2012, 06:59:08 AM
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In my opinion there are very few cricket writers around who are as good as "the Old Batsman", this week he has written a piece on Shane Watson http://theoldbatsman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/shane-watson-against-nature.html
however, take Shane Watson's name and think about your batting instead - I think you will find the main part of the commentary might give you pause for thought...
Shane Watson: Against Nature
Few batsmen fail as rarely as Shane Watson. Unfortunately for him, few batsmen succeed as rarely as Shane Watson, either. Here are his consecutive Test innings from July to December 2009: 62, 53, 51, 34, 40, 0, 96, 48, 89, 30, 93; and from October 2010 to September 2011: 56, 57, 32, 36, 41, 51, 57, 13, 95, 5, 54, 45, 38, 22, 0, 36. They are arbitrarily selected, but they represent nearly half of his career, and reflect his almost morbid consistency.
If you were to imagine average as a horizontal line on a graph with each innings marked as a dot either above or below that line, great players would produce something like the cardiograph you get in soap operas as a lead character lies liminally between life and death, with its peaks and with its valleys. Shane's would look more like the moment that the patient flat-lines and the doctors rush in to close the curtains, usher out the mistress and fire up the defibrillator.
Watson is an Australian straight off the drawing board. He presents such a convincing physical embodiment of their sunny idyll that the selectors seem to be investing in the inevitability of his success. You don't need Moneyball or the Availability Heuristic to think that if Shane Watson looked like Simon Katich, he might not have had the same opportunities. In the great certainty that his batting produces lies the uncertainty over him and his team.
He opened the batting in all of the innings listed above, something he has done 45 times out of the 64 occasions he has gone to the crease for Australia. A further six have come at his new position at number three, where, along with David Warner and Ed Cowan, he completes a trio of batsmen far less convincing than the three that follow.
It might not be fair to compare him to Ponting, who he periodically enjoys running out, or Dravid or Lara or Sanga, but it's worth looking at players of the same generation as him who fill that spot. Jonathan Trott has batted 48 times for England, making seven hundreds and nine fifties. Hashim Amla has gone in 103 times for South Africa, and made 14 hundreds and 23 fifties. Multiplied out, Trott is making scores at roughly the same rate and weight as Amla. Watson, who falls between the two in terms of experience, has batted 64 times, making two hundreds and 18 fifties. Trott's centuries include two doubles, a 184 and a 168. Amla has a highest score of 253, and four others above 140. Watto's best is 126. He has one less Test ton than Ravi Bopara.
It's against the nature and the history of batsmanship to be out for a median score as often as Shane is. Ultimately the greatest quality in batting is to be able to stay in, because everything else springs from that. Why can't he do it? Well, that might be asking to know something of his psyche or his soul. From the outside, he seems to be a momentum player, internal rhythms attuned to constant motion, disrupted when the flow is dried by the inevitable raising of defences by the bowling side as the game moves on.
Hashim Amla has made 52 per cent of his Test runs in boundaries and sixes. Jonathan Trott has made 44 per cent of his that way, Alastair Cook 46 per cent, Ricky Ponting 48 per cent, Kevin Pietersen 54 per cent. Watson has a percentage above all of them at 57. Only freaks like Sehwag with 67 per cent and Chris Gayle with 75 per cent go beyond him, and they each have two triple centuries in Test cricket. The stats suggest two things about the way Watson plays: that he needs boundaries to build his score, and that he gets out trying to hit them once the field goes back. Both are symptomatic of a player who either doesn't look at where the field is, or who can't keep hitting the gaps. That's guesswork, though. Perhaps Shane is just a rebours.
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Rebours?!
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the expression is "a rebours" and it is French for "doing it a different way" or a bit like the word "doosra" which means "the other way"
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i can see the point but it all seems a bit harsh on him, hes a pretty fine playe. also ignores the fact he averages around 30 with the ball and has made six odi hundred one of which was about 180, abeit against bangladesh. in some ways id take his consistancy over a big score or nothing man, particuarly when hes followed by Ponting, Clarke and Hussey who make hundreds but fail reguarly (more so ponting and hussey) at least watson always gives a stable base. interesting piece tho
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I think its a very well written piece and makes a point a lot of others have made about Watto. I don't think its fair to dismiss the guy for being consistently average, but I wonder if thee Aussies would have settled for the same from someone a decade ago.
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The stats suggest two things about the way Watson plays: that he needs boundaries to build his score, and that he gets out trying to hit them once the field goes back. Both are symptomatic of a player who either doesn't look at where the field is, or who can't keep hitting the gaps.
And how true is this in Club Cricket?
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He is an all-rounder who opens the batting but doesn't bowl much because it puts a strain on him to open and his body is already injury plagued. His best place is opening, but in order for him to bowl more, he needs to bat down the order. He is a good bowler, but he wouldn't be in the team for his bowling, even though he has a handy 59 wickets at 28.91, which is very respectable. This leave him in the team as a batsmen only and they should bowl him for a few overs here and there.
He just cannot do both, either bat down the order and bowl more - Chances are he'll get a solid amount of time to bat with how Australia have been crumbling with their batting at times, or, leave him as an opener and give him small spells in bowling (which is kind of pointless really).
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And how true is this in Club Cricket?
that is the point, how many club players struggle when the boundaries are dried up...
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i think the way he's out could tell us more, buzz in sure you have his stats in that head of yours somewhere :)
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that is the point, how many club players struggle when the boundaries are dried up...
me :(
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His best place is opening, but in order for him to bowl more, he needs to bat down the order.
Is it really? I'd have said that he goes too hard at the ball to be a successful opener...
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Would prefer to have someone like Watson who consistently scores 30+ runs an innings as opposed to someone like Cook who will get 5-6 scores of under 10 then a big double hundred.
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Would prefer to have someone like Watson who consistently scores 30+ runs an innings as opposed to someone like Cook who will get 5-6 scores of under 10 then a big double hundred.
Well Cook used to be like Watson, scoring 40-70 a large percentage of the time, and then get out, and people knocked him for it! Can't have everything...
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Well Cook used to be like Watson, scoring 40-70 a large percentage of the time, and then get out, and people knocked him for it! Can't have everything...
Not really - Cook has patches of that form but is at least reliable when he does get in. Someone like Watson could probably be hidden in a stronger top order but alongside teh hit and miss Warner and Cowan who...much as I like the guy, doesn't seem to be quite test class...leads to unnecessary exposure for the middle order.
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http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/8180.html?class=1;template=results;type=batting;view=dismissal_summary
For Canners.
Interesting that of all the run outs Watson has been involved in, he has only been the victim twice...
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Because such things interest me, here is Alastair Cook's record after the same amount of Tests as Watson has currently played - a lot of fifties as Tumo said, but seven centuries too. HS is one higher than Watson, however, he has taken a couple less wickets...
Mat Inns NO Runs HS Ave BF SR 100 50
35 64 2 2634 127 42.48 5704 46.17 7 15
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I agree that club cricketers think that the longer you bat at the crease the more boundaries you shoudl be hitting so much so that after 30 overs at the crease every ball has to go to the boundary!! Is it the 20-20 craze that is causing this problem? A lack of experience at pacing an innings? Or jsut a general tiredness and lack of concentration? Probably the lot..... especially in young kids.
I used to rely on boundaries quite a lot, now i love to get the boundaries early, spread the field ..... milk the singles and the odd boundary ..... bring the field back in then start smashing the boundaries again when well set.
Working the field is an often overlooked part of batting by many inexperienced batters.
Once you get a big score, you realise it isnt all smash bang wallop like these fellas on the TV .......
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I agree that club cricketers think that the longer you bat at the crease the more boundaries you shoudl be hitting so much so that after 30 overs at the crease every ball has to go to the boundary!! Is it the 20-20 craze that is causing this problem? A lack of experience at pacing an innings? Or jsut a general tiredness and lack of concentration? Probably the lot..... especially in young kids.
Good comment. When I was young (15-19) I could hit the ball miles, play all the shots in the book and had lightning reflexes. I averaged 25ish. Now I'm old and run down, almost never hit sixes and have a reputation (albeit slightly harshly) as a total crabber. I average 40+ most seasons...
If the 19 year old me had the 34 year old me's brain, we might have made a half way decent player...
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I learnt a lot from playing indoor cricket with the drop and run so whenever I bat in a match with someone I played indoor with then we would often pick up lots of singles and frustrate the oppo. It's amazing how many more runs you can score with good running.
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I learnt a lot from playing indoor cricket with the drop and run so whenever I bat in a match with someone I played indoor with then we would often pick up lots of singles and frustrate the oppo. It's amazing how many more runs you can score with good running.
In 4th XI cricket it's easy to see early on who you can hit the ball to and still take a single. A lot of players at club level aren't good enough to run you out when you take a sharp single. I have been run out by a couple of direct hits, but then that's the risk you take if you misjudge how well you hit the ball...
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Today we have my hero Aakash on Virat Kholi... (who needs the "Analyst" when we have the "Insider"...)
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/581741.html
The Kohli method
His numbers are phenomenal, and that's thanks largely to his ability to make a plan and stick to it
When they first donned the Indian colours, the likes of Ms Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh were self-assured, resilient, fiercely talented and more. Today, though, Virat Kohli seems to have outmoded his predecessors in a manner that has made him the face of Indian cricket's next generation. He has scored 13 centuries in 90 ODI matches. Those are phenomenal numbers by any yardstick. Look closer, in a comparative framework, and the numbers hit harder. Kumara Sangakkara, for instance, has scored 14 hundreds, 11 of those from No. 3 or higher, in 333 ODIs. Virender Sehwag has scored 15 in 249 matches, and Gautam Gambhir has 11 in 139. These stats, striking as they are, tell us a thing or two about the sort of prospect Kohli is for Indian cricket.
If one goes by the exterior - the spiky hair, tattoos, the swagger and arrogance of a confident young man, Kohli epitomises 21st century Indian youth. But the way he bats, especially in the first half of each innings, he seems the antithesis of how young cricketers in India like to bat in this day and age of T20 cricket. These days most young men prefer to go after the bowling right from the beginning, and to keep hitting it till they last. It takes your breath away when it comes off, and looks woeful when it doesn't, but taking a bit of a risk seems to be the new way of living.
Kohli, on the contrary, is old-fashioned when it comes to constructing his innings. Regardless of his personal form, familiarity with the attack and the conditions, he always starts slowly, albeit confidently. At the beginning of an innings, every batsman is slightly edgy and likes to get bat on ball and score a few to get going. This urge to get on with the game is even stronger if you are in good form. It must take immense self-control for Kohli to resist that temptation every time he walks out to bat these days, and to stick to his original plan of biding time.
His self-control at the beginning of every innings is the primary reason for his consistency. Exercising this self-control would be a lot easier for someone who doesn't have as many shots as Kohli does, which makes his self-denial more creditable. His ability to plan meticulously and then diligently follow the plan is the common thread in most of his innings.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the bigger the arc one's bat creates, the more power one generates. The arc starts from the top of the backlift and finishes with the follow-through after playing the shot. The best way to ensure a bigger arc is to allow the top hand to remain in control for as long as possible and extend the arms fully (elbow not bent) after playing the shot. Kohli's bat-swing, however, is not quite how the coaching manuals say it ought to be. He has a relatively short backlift, and an even shorter follow-through. But he generates phenomenal bat speed by flicking his wrists at the point of contact, which in turn generates immense power. The flip side of such a bat-swing is that he is a bottom-hand-dominated player. Once again, though, by delaying his strokes, he has found a way to be equally fluent through the off side.
When I saw Kohli for the first time, I was a little sceptical about his short front-foot stride. To make matters more complicated, that short stride was going far too across. While the short and across front-foot stride allowed him to whip balls pitched on middle through the on side, it also made him slightly susceptible to full-pitched swinging deliveries, or when the ball deviated appreciably off the pitch.
During one of our conversations while playing for Delhi, I told him about my observations. He assured me that he had found a way around it, which was by allowing the ball to come to him. I saw merit in his method of dealing with the shortcoming, but I wasn't fully convinced that it would work at the highest level.
By scoring 13 ODI hundreds while batting at No. 3, he has certainly proved that his solution works just fine. It also proves that technique is slightly overrated at times. In fact, Kohli's method of overcoming his technical deficiency is his biggest strength: playing very late. By allowing the ball to come to him, he is able to find the gaps more often. Playing the ball right under his eyes also ensures that he misses fewer deliveries, and so the perils of the short front-foot stride are taken care of.
He may still find it slightly difficult when the ball is pitched up in seaming conditions, but considering the way he has evolved as a batsman, I don't have any reasons to believe that Kohli won't find a way around that too.
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here is how to do it... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2KupB5Pufc !