very interested in Vic's comments about coaching the hook and pull, personally I've always believed these particular shots come naturally or not at all. Jonathan Trott would be one example.
There's been plenty of players over the years who did well in Test cricket without pulling or hooking.....they either swayed or ducked under
To answer ppccopener and a few others on here in relation to the hook shot and Phil Hughes recent acquisition of the stroke.
As most cricket fanatics on this site well know, Australian batsmen and the hook shot are synonymous with each other. One cannot think of one without conjuring up images of the other.
Every great Australian batsman, be it Bradman, Ian and Greg Chappell, Kim Hughes, Allan Border, Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Mike Hussey, Michael Clarke and now Davey Warner all play the hook instinctively.
Why?
Because we are brought up playing it from a very early age. It is in our DNA to play it. So when an Aussie batsman doesn't hook, it seems odd. Almost un-Australian.
Steve Waugh was a compulsive hooker, but decided against the West Indies it was asking for trouble. So he put the shot away...for good. Never played it against anyone. His reasoning was that he didn't want to play a shot that was for him low percentage.
Others like the Chappell's, Kim Hughes, Ponting etc played the hook so well, that it was an attacking weapon to put a fast bowler in his place. "You reckon you are fast...COP THAT!"
Which leads us to Phil Hughes...
As a kid Hughes grew up on his parents banana plantation in Macksville. His dad used to bowl/throw downs at Phil for hours on end sometimes to satiate his sons thirst for improvement. As Phil's Italian mums rose bushes were on his legside, he knew that any shot into them would have his mother upset requesting they stop playing. SO Hughes avoided leg side strokes altogether and developed a home baked technique that allowed him to stay legside of the ball and hit it anywhere from over slip through the covers, to straight...and occasionally an on drive thrown in. But hooks and pulls were out of the question.
So when I saw Phil Hughes hooking and pulling in FC games less than 2 years ago...I knew that this was part of Cricket Australia's brains trust to try and turn Phil Hughes into an round wicket player rather than someone who merely swayed out of the way of bouncers monotonously.
What was obvious straight away was Phil Hughes hooking and pulling, whilst technically sound, looked unnatural...sort of mechanical. It was obvious he had honed it with hours of work with a bowling machine...but he still did not have a natural "feel" for the stroke.
In his innings yesterday, Hughes would have been almost certainly thinking "not only do I need a hundred to keep my name up in lights for a test recall, there has to be runs scored all round the wicket. Because the Aussie selectors will take notice if I crunch a few hooks and pulls to the boundary".
The Aussie selectors have an ingrained mentality of what an Aussie batsmen should play like...and when they saw Hughes back when he was slicing and dicing a bewildered South African bowling attack who were puzzled as to what this kid was up to with this strange technique...rather than just leave the boy be, experts like Greg Chappell started almost immediately to mess with the kids mind by making public statements along the lines of "Phil Hughes can potentially be a great Australian batsman, but he needs to start playing the hook and pull".
I remember those press quotes as clear as day.
The kid has scored 469 runs in a 3 test series on the high veldt against Steyn, Morkel and Ntini, and he was already being criticized??
By the time he got to England for the Ashes, he was already muddled in his thinking with all the conflicting advice he was receiving.
He was dumped after 3 test innings. 36 at Sophia Gardens. 4 (caught down the legside) and 16 (when Strauss claimed a catch from a ball that bounced in front of him) at Lords.
HARSH.
But the kid took it well and thought his time would come soon enough.
In the mean time, CA sent guys like Justin Langer to instruct Hughes to play the hook and pull etc and the lad became more confused. He was brought in for the injured Watson in a test in New Zealand and when Oz needed 115 to win, Hughes scored 86 not out off 75 balls to leave Katich standing still as Australia won by 10 wickets. And the selectors congratulated the lad, by dropping him immediately!
This messed with Hughes mind and his confidence plummeted to unseen levels. He was in shocking form in FC cricket when the selectors against all logic brought him back against England in the 3rd test of the 2010/11 Ashes. He predictably failed in all three tests, although he battled hard. Within a few weeks, he was dumped from the NSW team altogether and was back playing grade cricket. Confidence shot.
He worked hard and got selected for the Sri Lanka tour where he made a decent hundred in the 3rd test and then in the first test against SA in SA, he made a dashing 88. Three tests later, he was dumped again after the innocuous Chris Martin had him flashing at balls outside off stump straight to Guptill at third slip.
The "Phil Hughes has to learn how to play the hook and pull" drums beat louder and louder.
Brought back more than a year later against Sri Lanka at home he made 86 and 87 in the two tests and then had a poor first two tests against India in India (most Oz batsmen struggle there), but he came good with 69 in 3rd test (given out caught behind when he missed it ala Khawaja style) and 40 in the last test.
Made 81 not out in the first Ashes test...and true to form, was dropped straight after making two poor scores in the Lords test not to be seen again.
The hooking and pulling intensified as Hughes then spent the last year and a bit piling up big scores (two double centuries this year)...but ot looked forced...not natural. Because it really wasn't in Hughes psyche to play the shot.
Now today we are left praying for the well being a of young guy who is lying in a life threatening coma down to a shot he would not have even bothered playing 18 months ago.
Now is not the time for blood letting and blame shifting...but Phil Hughes was given many, many mixed messages as to what it would take to get back into the team only to see blokes like Maxwell selected at #3 in Australia's most recent test in UAE. Never once did he complain...but, I cannot help but feel Hughes was extending himself in ways he need not have to try and appease the Australian Selectors.
The ball hitting below the helmet line on a batsmen through with the shot too early is unpreventable and cannot be planned for. Driving a batsman to play a shot he was never comfortable with was entirely avoidable.
If you are not hooking by the time you are 14-15, you will never be a hooker.
The pull is entirely different (although mechanically it resembles its cousin the hook) in that it is played from balls that are chest height and lower and frequently from outside of off stump and thus off the line of the body. The hook is played to a ball that is zeroing in on your head...if you are not confident playing it, you should never play it. It si like asking someone with jumpy nerves to be a bomb disposal specialist...it is courting with disaster.
All we can hope for is that Phil makes a full recovery to health. That is what I am praying for...and I know all you blokes want the same.
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Topic: Phil Hughes in critical condition (Read 19790 times)