Why footwork is overrated when keeping wicket

Deep Dasgupta in Cricinfo

I was recently asked for my opinion of Rishabh Pant's wicketkeeping. One of the things I spoke about then, apart from his good glovework, was how little he moved - which is the correct approach for English conditions. In general - and don't be shocked when I say this - footwork in keeping is overrated.

Don't get me wrong. Footwork is essential and an important facet of wicketkeeping, but the question is: how much and when should you move your feet? Since childhood I've been told about the importance of footwork and how good keepers never dive but rather just glide to the ball. "The less you dive, the better you are," I was told. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Like batting, with keeping too, it's your hands that will do the job. What footwork does is get you in good positions to catch or play the ball.

The problem with moving too much comes to light when the ball deviates from the predicted path - for example, when it takes an edge or if it changes direction after pitching, as it does when spin bowling is involved. If the keeper is on the move when the ball changes its predicted path, by the time he stabilises himself and reacts, it's often too late.

There are two critical phases when the keeper has to be stable - when the ball is pitching and when it is passing the bat. These are the two times when the ball is most likely to deviate. It is important to stay still, with a strong, stable base, at these times, to give yourself the best chance of reacting to likely changes.

Jos Buttler being dropped by Pant at Trent Bridge is an example of the keeper being on the move when the ball was edged. By the time Pant could stabilise and move, it was too late. (It was a tough chance, though.) If you take these two phases out, there isn't much time to move anyway, be it before the ball pitches or after it passes the bat.

The big argument for footwork is that it lets you cover a lot of ground. But how much ground does a keeper really need to cover for a seamer? On the off side, one would expect the keeper to reach till the first slip, and on the leg side a little bit more. First slip is about half a body length, so roughly one shuffling step away, or a dive. On the leg side, it's a step, then a dive - or another shuffling step or thereabouts. That is all the footwork the keeper needs. And that's all he will need, if he moves after the ball has passed the bat .Wriddhiman Saha's half-squat allows him remain stable and keep his eye on the ball Getty Images

Two of the best examples of not moving too much I can think of are MS Dhoni and Wriddhiman Saha. Against seamers, Saha doesn't squat fully. He stays still in a half-squat till the ball passes the bat. It is the same with Dhoni - his movements are minimal and his hand-eye coordination is among the best that I've seen. His keeping looks unorthodox but his basics are extremely good and solid: he stays still for as long as possible, keeps watching the ball till the last moment, and backs his hands to do the rest. At times, he and Saha catch the ball like outfielders, with one knee on the ground (or "long-barrier", in cricket parlance).

Another argument in favour of the keeper moving is the concept of catching the ball inside the body - that is, catching it between the body and the line of the stumps - promoted by a lot of coaches and pundits. This originated, if my memory serves me right, in Australia.

The carry and pace of Australian pitches means the keeper has substantially more time, because he is further back from the stumps, to take an extra step on either side. It's not the same on low and slow pitches, like you get in the subcontinent. The reason I'm not a big fan of catching the ball inside the body is that theoretically it sounds good but it isn't practical on most pitches. I must add, though, that I do encourage catching on either side of the body - just to make sure the hands have enough room to move.

Catching depends a lot on eye-hand coordination. The eyes are like cameras - the more you move, the more blurry the picture. For me, the best way to capture a moving ball is to stay still. The hands will catch what the eyes can see.

Though wicketkeeping is an important aspect of the game - and a tough one - unfortunately it does not get the attention that batting, bowling and fielding in general do. As long as the keeper is catching them, it's fine, but if it goes wrong, "his basics are wrong", as someone said to the media about me once. Sounds funny now but trust me, it wasn't at the time! Due to this lack of airtime in the public discourse for wicketkeeping, discussion of it remains somewhat caught in a quagmire of age-old clichés and half-baked knowledge. I would like to see more people getting involved in the conversation and delving deeper into the thankless job called wicketkeeping.

Batting against the bouncer

Ashley Mallett in Cricinfo


Fast bowlers use the short ball as a legitimate weapon to unsettle any batsman. It is a fair and reasonable tactic that has stood the test of time.

On that terrible day at the SCG in November 2014, Phillip Hughes appeared to misjudge the pace of the ball and looked to be through his hook shot before he was struck in the neck, clear of the protective face of the helmet.

It was a shocking, freak accident and, especially for Phil's family and friends, so terrible in its finality.

In the wake of the Hughes' tragedy there has been a disturbing number of quality batsmen being struck on the helmet. The "hit" list is not dominated by mid- to lower-order batsmen. In recent times players of the calibre of Steven Smith, Shane Watson, Michael Clarke, Chris Rogers and Virat Kohli have copped heavy blows to the helmet.

When looking at footage of the incidents, you see all too clearly that all of the players who were hit were not watching the ball and they were struck on the side of the helmet. 

Just a couple of weeks after Hughes' tragic death, Australia played India at the Adelaide Oval. The ground was packed but the silence was deafening the instant Kohli was hit on the helmet from the first ball he faced from Mitchell Johnson.

Kohli, one of the best and most exciting batsmen in the world, was not watching the ball.

If some of the world's best batsmen are taking their eye off the ball, what's happening to batting technique among the young, emerging cricketers?

All parents want their children to be safe, but just sticking a helmet on them is not the only solution here. Youngsters need to learn to watch the ball like a hawk and to play short-pitched bowling.

Junior coaches everywhere must look at what they are doing. Proper technique against short-pitched bowling starts the day the youngster picks up a cricket bat, eager to learn the game. The Chappells were five years old when they did.

Former Test opening batsman Ashley Woodcock coaches juniors and seniors at University Cricket Club in Adelaide. He learnt the rudiments of batting from his older brother Steve.

"Two basic shots are the backward defence and the forward defence," Woodcock said. "With the modern-day forward press, it makes life difficult to get back and across to a short-pitched delivery. In the days before helmets a batsman had no choice. He had to watch the ball."

Long-time South Australian captain Les Favell used to invite a current State player to accompany him on coaching trips to the country areas. He stressed to the youngsters that "all the attacking shots are linked to two basic shots: the forward and back defence."

When a batsman plays back, the movement is back and across. From that position he can cut, pull or hook. Shots developed from the forward defence are the off and the cover drives and shots off the pads.

Among the list of players who accompanied Favell on those trips were Garry Sobers and Barry Richards. Both men had a back-and-across first movement. Those basic movements are important, all done while never taking your eye off the ball.

Against fast bowling a back-and-across first movement allows the batsman to get in behind the line of flight. If the ball is wide he can allow it to pass, but he can hook a short ball that is passing over leg stump if he is back and across his stumps, with his head inside the line of flight. This technique is terrific because even if he makes a mistake and misses the ball, his head is inside the line and out of harm's way.

England's Colin Cowdrey scored centuries against West Indian speedsters Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith in the early 1960s. He likened the challenge of facing a fast bowler to be akin to a boxer moving his feet swiftly, never taking his eyes off his opponent, easily swaying away from danger.

Ian Redpath, a former Australian Test opener, rarely hooked the ball, yet he scored three centuries in 1975-76 against West Indies, whose attack included Andy Roberts and Michael Holding. Redpath's method was make the West Indies bowlers bowl to him. Anything short, shoulder to head high, he swayed out of the way, waiting for a ball of full length to drive for four. 

Last Friday, during the elimination final of the Matador Cup at Drummoyne Oval, New South Wales opening batsman Daniel Hughes was struck on the side of his helmet as he attempted to hook a short ball from Victoria's Peter Siddle. Hughes fell to his knees as concerned fieldsmen rushed to his side. The medical officer at the ground, Dr John Orchard, immediately ordered Hughes to take a concussion test. After undergoing the test, Hughes (retired hurt on 23) was ruled out of taking further part in the match. A "concussion substitute" (Nick Larkin) took his place.

Fellow NSW batsman Nic Maddinson replaced Hughes in the order. He too was struck a blow on the helmet and was assessed under Cricket Australia's new Concussion and Head Trauma Police by medical staff on the ground and allowed to bat on. He played on and belted a match-winning 86.

These incidents further highlight how dangerous the game has become mainly because of poor technique against short-pitched bowling and batsmen taking their eye off the ball.

Former Test captain Ian Chappell was a good hooker and I can't remember him being hit in the head at any stage of his first-class career.

"When you're quickly on to the front foot it's impossible to get inside the line of the delivery to play the shot more safely," he said.

"I can't believe they [Cricket Australia] held a review of safety and it didn't include the technique of playing the short ball."

Bob Simpson, a former Australian Test opener and captain, was adamant that technique against fast bowling generally seemed to be lacking.

"I think the helmet gives a batsman a false sense of security," he said.

Don Bradman reckoned the most important aspect of batting was to watch the ball. Arguably Australia's best batsman since Bradman, Greg Chappell, nowadays Cricket Australia's talent manager, said the bigger issue is that the helmets are now heavier and cause players to stand more upright to manage that weight.

"This puts their weight back on their heels more than the players of the past who were more on the balls of their feet," Greg said. "They find it harder to change position quickly so they are more prone to get hit than a nimble-footed player.

"The fact that they know that they are less likely to get badly hurt, there is not the same incentive to develop a good method to deal with short balls. We didn't have that luxury so we had to get into a better position.

"The two keys to not getting hit are to be on the balls of your feet and to watch the ball."

In relation to coaching youngsters in the art of batting, Greg suggested starting with a soft ball. "Unlike our father [Martin Chappell], I wouldn't recommend using a hard ball from the start.

"Use a soft ball and include short balls early by getting a youngster to hit to areas. What I mean by hitting to areas is to set the session up anywhere but a net. A tennis court is ideal so the kid has a feeling of space around them, but the ball can't go too far. Apart from ensuring that the grip and stance are comfortable, relaxed and efficient, I wouldn't 'teach' the kid anything else."

Greg advocated setting three "scoring zones" - square of the wicket on the off-side, square of the wicket on the leg side and straight back past the bowler.

"If one can cut, pull and drive, one can be a great player. Think Graeme Pollock - those three shots were all he needed. Every other shot is a derivative of those three anyway."

Greg sets up a coaching session by bowling from the net of a tennis court to the youngster batting on the base line. Scoring zones are from the back corner of the net to mid-pitch both sides. He lobs the ball to the batsman and direct them to a target. For example, if the ball is lobbed full and straight, Greg will say, "Okay son, I want you to hit it to the net straight past me".

If a cut shot to the point boundary is required, the ball is lobbed short and wide of the off stump.

"I include balls bouncing up to chest and head height very early so it becomes part of the whole rather than a separate part of the learning," Greg said.

"Most kids quickly work out that if they shift their body to the off side of the short ball they can hit it hard through the leg-side target area. As they get more proficient, I cramp them for room with more speed to see how they cope. If they have a problem, I ask them what they think the solution is rather than 'telling them what to do. It generally works extremely well and the kids progress quickly."

Martin Chappell gave his three boys this advice: "You have a bat in your hand for one reason and one reason only and that is to score runs. Learn to use the bat properly and you will never get hit."

Greg believes good footwork is nothing more than developing the ability to shift one's body from one position to another to free one's arms to hit the ball to the intended target area.

"This is what Bradman did better than the rest of us," he said.

For the sake of the health of our international and emerging batsmen, let's hope the administrators take heed of the sound advice from three of Australia's batting legends.

By all means, let's have lighter, stronger batting helmets, but the very first step in safety for batsmen against any bowler is to watch the ball.

The ICC can't afford to take its eye off the ball over this safety issue. Safety for batsmen is a global priority. Batsman getting hit on the head - whether while wearing a helmet or not - are vulnerable to serious injury.

Proper technique when playing the short stuff is paramount and every batting coach from the grassroots to the Test arena needs to take heed.

Trumper, Pujara and the art of dominating a spinner

Ian Chappell in Cricinfo

It was a distinct pleasure to watch India bat in the first Test against New Zealand. It was good to see spin bowling played so well.

I especially enjoyed the play of Cheteshwar Pujara. I love the way he quickly gets back to either play a forcing shot through the covers or a pull to the midwicket boundary. Many batsmen limit themselves by "closing off" when they play the pull shot, but Pujara opens up, thrusting his left leg towards the square-leg umpire, and creates a wider arc in which to place the ball. He was well supported by M Vijay, a dangerous opponent because he handles the new ball competently and can extend his innings by playing spin bowling well. This pair and Virat Kohli give India a trifecta of batsmen who can dictate terms to opposition spinners.

As well as watching the Test on television, I was also in the process of reading Gideon Haigh's excellent new book, Stroke of Genius. It's about Victor Trumper's batting artistry captured in one photograph, titled "Jumping Out". In his playing days, Trumper extolled the virtue of footwork with this simple philosophy: "Spoil a bowler's length and you've got him."

This statement accords with the best use of the feet against a top-class legspinner that I've witnessed. Following VVS Laxman's magnificent 2000-01 series against Australia in general and Shane Warne in particular, I asked Warne how he thought he had bowled. "I didn't think I bowled badly," replied Warne. "You didn't," I answered. "When a batsman comes out three metres and drives you wide of mid-on and then when you go higher and shorter to tempt him with the next delivery, he's quickly onto the back foot and pulls through midwicket, that's not bad bowling."
In the words of Trumper, Laxman's nimble footwork, ensured "he'd got him [Warne]." It's this type of decisive footwork that allows a batsman to dictate the bowler's field placings. Both Pujara and Vijay did this exquisitely by employing the late cut and either the square cut or the forcing shot off the back foot. By playing both shots, they forced the fielding captain to place a man behind as well as just in front of point. When a captain has to expend two men patrolling a limited area, it leaves some inviting gaps elsewhere.

Good footwork is not only decisive, it's also physically demanding if you play a long innings. Pujara, like my former team-mate Doug Walters, the best player of offspin bowling I've seen, pushes back with intent. If Mitchell Santner had done something similar instead of just swivelling in the crease, his admirable rearguard action may have continued longer.

Too many batsmen are easily tempted into lazy footwork. They either prop forward one pace or just swivel on the back foot rather than advancing to attack the delivery or quickly retreating to allow more time to place the shot.

Some right-hand batsmen also limit themselves by moving outside off stump to thwart offspinners. This theory is flawed because it's based on survival rather than on developing a method that creates more scoring opportunities as opposed to than fewer.

As well as stifling scoring opportunities, this theory also opens batsmen up to being ambushed by smart bowlers like R Ashwin. He achieved such a dismissal when he cleverly out-thought Ish Sodhi to bowl him behind his pads.

The more proficient a spin bowler, the more attacking a batsman's thought process needs to be. This doesn't mean coming up with ways to belt him to or over the boundary but rather thinking of how to score regularly and frustrate the spinner. This is a demanding process both physically and mentally and isn't achieved by lazy or leaden footwork.

For some time India has been the leading light in producing batsmen who are devoid of gimmicks and rely on tried and tested methods to score at every opportunity. Whatever development methods India are employing for their young batsmen, the rest of the cricket world should start taking notice.

On the other hand

Or why it may not be a bad idea to reverse your bat grip


SB TANG in Cricinfo


One summer's day, some 34 years ago, seven-year-oldMike Hussey was at home in the beachside Perth suburb of Mullaloo doing what he always did on a morning in the last week of December: watching the Boxing Day Test on TV. After seeing his hero Allan Border take Australia to the brink of a famous victory, only to fall an agonising three runs short, Hussey went out into his backyard and did something that few Australian cricketers have done before or since: he changed hands, permanently.

Hussey is naturally right-handed. He writes right-handed, plays tennis right-handed, brushes his teeth right-handed, picks up a spoon right-handed, and throws and bowls with his right arm. When he first picked up a cricket bat, he picked it up right-handed. But on that fateful sunny morning he decided to try batting left-handed, like Border, and ended up sticking with it for the rest of his life.

In so doing, Hussey may well have inadvertently bequeathed himself a natural technical advantage, for if there is one thing that the two main schools of batsmanship that exist in Australia - the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) school and the native autodidactic school headed by Sir Donald Bradman and Greg Chappell - agree on, it is this: a grip with a firm top hand and loose bottom hand is optimal for good batsmanship.

Logically it is easier for a batsman who holds the bat with his naturally stronger hand as the top hand (and his naturally weaker hand as the bottom hand) to grip it with a firm top hand and a loose bottom hand. When Hussey switched to batting left-handed, his naturally stronger right hand became his top hand. That wasn't what motivated his change - he did it "purely" because he "wanted to be like Allan Border" - and even when he became a world-class batsman, Hussey was generally not conscious of "the dominance of one hand over another", except when batting at the death of a one-day or T20 game. It was then, he told the Cricket Monthly, that he took the firm top-hand, loose bottom-hand grip to its logical apotheosis:

"At the end of a one-day game or a T20 game, when you're looking to basically hit sixes every ball… I made a conscious effort to really loosen the grip of my bottom hand. So I'd basically just rest the bottom hand [on the bat] on one finger - my index finger - because I was finding that when I was looking to slog, even though my bottom left hand was my less [naturally] dominant hand, it was gripping the bat too hard and taking control of the bat too quickly and affecting my swing. I wasn't hitting through the line of the ball as well as I would have liked."

Greg Chappell, Cricket Australia's first full-time national talent manager, has a clear vision for how Australia can continue to nurture its distinctive style of cricket - aggressive, attacking and winning. A firm-top-hand-loose-bottom-hand grip - a trait that Bradman himself believed to be "of supreme importance when playing a forward defensive shot" - is part of that vision. "It is", says Chappell in a recent interview with the Cricket Monthly, "essential for good batsmanship".

Firstly, he explains, such a grip enables a batsman to obtain the optimal bat swing - a pendular motion that maximises his chances of hitting the ball in the middle of the sweet spot. A batsman with that grip "initiates" the movement of his bat with his top hand and relegates his bottom hand to "a secondary role in the initiation [process]" as "the fulcrum". This naturally encourages him to pick up his bat so that, in his backswing, it is pointing between first slip and gully. His bat will then naturally and automatically drop back down onto the line of the ball when he is executing a straight-bat shot. The bat will "be on line [with the ball] from the top of the backswing all the way through the intended shot".

Secondly, a firm-top-hand-loose bottom-hand grip helps a batsman to stay balanced, with his weight on the balls of his feet like a champion boxer ready to throw (or ride) a punch, able to "move forward or back" into the optimal position to play the ball and synchronise the movements of his entire body.

The MCC agrees with Chappell insofar as both its instructional books constantly emphasise the importance of playing with a strong top hand, a high front elbow and a loose bottom hand, especially when executing forward defensives and front-foot drives. The problem is that the MCC's two specific written injunctions regarding how to pick up and grip a bat make it inherently difficult for batsmen to use a strong-top-hand-loose-bottom-hand grip. The MCC instructs batsmen to pick up the bat so that "the back [knuckle-side] of [their top] left hand, if the bat is held upright, is fac[ing] somewhere between mid-off and extra cover" and the hands form, with the thumb and first finger of each, two aligned Vs whose central line runs "half-way between the outer edge of the bat and the splice".

Pick up a bat with that MCC-prescribed grip and attempt to play a straight drive, off drive or cover drive. You will find that that grip encourages you to push through the shot with a firm bottom hand that shuts your bat face towards the on side. That is certainly what a young Chappell - saddled with the MCC grip taught to him at the age of five by a local youth coach with a very English pedagogy - found. Even after making his Sheffield Shield debut at the age of 18, he scored "about three-quarters" of his runs through the on side, a limitation so acute that it was the subject of much sledging from his opponents (and team-mates). Chappell recalls, in his 2011 autobiography Fierce Focus, that his own captain at South Australia, Les Favell, said to him, "I hope you won't lose sight of the fact that there are two sides of the wicket".

The firm bottom-hand tendency created by this grip is exacerbated by the explicit written instructions issued by the MCC to kids in Cricket - How to Play: pick up a bat as if you are "gripping an axe" with two hands to chop some wood that is lying on the ground. This instruction would - according to sports scientists David Mann, Oliver Runswick and Peter Allen - typically encourage kids to pick up a bat with their dominant hand as the bottom hand on the handle. Logically, this would make them more likely to play with a strong bottom hand.

In England, the influence of the MCC's coaching scriptures has always been strong. This can be seen in the faithful reproduction of the MCC's two injunctions regarding a batsman's grip in coaching manuals authored by the likes of Geoff Boycott and Robin Smith. In Australia, the influence has generally been much weaker. Seven of Australia's top 15 Test run scorers - Neil Harvey, Matthew Hayden, Michael Clarke, Justin Langer, Mark Taylor, Mike Hussey and Adam Gilchrist - have gripped a cricket bat with their naturally dominant hand as their top hand, suggesting either a blissful ignorance or a deliberate contravention of the MCC's two injunctions.

Bradman certainly didn't use the MCC-prescribed grip. Instead, as he wrote in The Art of Cricket, he gripped the bat in a manner that felt "comfortable and natural" to him, forming with the thumb and first finger of each hand two aligned Vs whose central line ran through the splice line of the bat. This meant that when he played a forward defensive, the back of his top hand faced him (and its palm faced the bowler). This neutral grip made it easier to hold the bat with a firm, controlling top hand and a loose bottom hand. As Bradman explained, "it curbs any tendency to follow through [with a strong bottom hand when playing the forward defensive]".

And it was Bradman who, on a balmy, almost cloudless December morning in 1967, advised a 19-year-old Chappell to ditch the MCC grip in favour of the Bradman grip. Chappell heeded the advice for the rest of his long and illustrious career, during which he became renowned throughout the cricket world for his piercing straight drives and cover drives. That advice, acknowledged Chappell in Fierce Focus, "transformed my game".

The Cricket Monthly spoke to seven cricketers of varying ages, three of whom - 68-year-old Chappell, 27-year-old Tim Buszard and 23-year-old Kevin Tissera - are bottom-hand natural, and four of whom - 45-year-old Justin Langer, 41-year-old Hussey, 34-year-old Ed Cowanand 20-year-old Matt Renshaw - are top-hand natural.

For want of a well-established term, this article will refer to batsmen who grip a bat with their naturally dominant hand as their top hand as "top-hand natural" and those who grip a bat with their naturally dominant hand as their bottom hand as "bottom-hand natural".

None of those interviewed - not even Renshaw and Buszard, whose dads are cricket coaches - can recall being expressly directed on how to pick up and grip a bat when they first encountered one. Their earliest cricketing memories are of playing in their backyard, local park and/or beaches with their dads, siblings and mates, using whatever materials were available. For Hussey, those materials initially consisted of nothing more than "a couple of big sticks" as bats and "some little rocks" as balls.

"I certainly don't remember [being directed how to pick up and grip a cricket bat]," says Langer. "It was just a natural instinct [to pick up the bat left-handed]. I can't remember anyone coming out and saying, 'You should be a left-hander or a right-hander.'"

Like many Australian cricketers, Cowan learnt the game in his backyard and at the local park - conveniently located across the road from his family home - with his dad and two older brothers, and didn't encounter formal coaches until he was about 14. He is completely right-handed, but he bats left-handed and has always done so. As an uncoached kid he wasn't conscious of the technicalities of holding a bat; however, as a teenager, he met the late Peter Roebuck, whose coaching and mentorship would have a profound and positive impact on him.

Roebuck firmly believed in having a strong top hand and theorised that batsmen who bat with their naturally dominant hand as their top hand "have accidentally gained an advantage for themselves". He expressed that belief and theory not only in his unequivocal columns in the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald but in his coaching sessions with the teenage Cowan, "consistently letting [him] know that he had an advantage he should be using". Cowan recalls: "Probably at 14, I realised it felt like I had an advantage because it was easier to craft a technique with my top hand being my [naturally] dominant hand."

Langer became aware earlier because, somewhat unusually for an Australian cricketer, he was exposed to coaching at a young age. "When I was… maybe eight or nine years old," he recalls, "my dad brought my first cricket coach around to the backyard and he taught me the basics of the game - his name was Bryn Martin and I still remember him. He used to come on Sunday mornings, talk about the basics and particularly about having a tight-top-hand-and-loose-bottom-hand grip, doing most of my batting through my top hand." That made perfect sense to Langer, who soon realised that that grip came "more naturally" to him because his naturally dominant right hand was his top hand on the bat.

Renshaw, Queensland's rising star, thinks that his small size and consequent lack of physical strength as a junior naturally encouraged him to play with a strong-top-hand-loose-bottom-hand grip because he "couldn't really play the big shots… with that bottom hand". He wasn't conscious of top-hand versus bottom-hand dominance as a kid, but is now of the opinion that his "top-hand dominance definitely helps" him to hit straight.

It should be noted that, although it is easier for top-hand natural batsmen to have a strong-top-hand-loose-bottom-hand grip, numerous great bottom-hand natural Australian Test batsmen - such as Bradman, Steve Waugh and Chappell - have possessed that grip too. Chappell is "a right-hander through and through" and "batted right-handed" with his naturally stronger right hand as his bottom hand, but, he explains: "I know in my batting my top hand [which was my naturally weaker left hand] was my dominant hand. We were fortunate that our father understood [the importance of having a dominant top hand and a very light bottom hand] and drilled that into us from a very early age."

Although, in Australia at least, top-hand natural batsmen are nothing new - Neil Harvey played his first Test, against India at the Adelaide Oval, in January 1948 - it appears that more and more of them are appearing at Test level across the globe. Sports scientists, led by Dr Florian Loffing at the University of Kassel in Germany, recently discovered, after examining every Test cricketer with a batting average of at least 30, that the proportion of them who are top-hand natural has been growing steadily over time: 0% of those who made their Test debut in the 1880s were top-hand natural; for those who made their Test debut this decade, the figure is 33%.

The issue was highlighted by a recent research article in Sports Medicine by Mann, Runswick and Allen. They studied a sample of 43 professional batsmen (who had played first-class and/or international cricket) and 93 amateur batsmen (with less than five years' experience) and found that 40% of those professional batsmen batted with their naturally dominant hand as their top hand, whereas only 9% of the amateur batsmen did so.

Some media reports seemed to suggest that the article concluded that there is a universally "right" batting grip (namely, the top-hand natural grip) and a universally "wrong" batting grip (namely, the bottom-hand natural grip). However, the research itself did not say that. Mann, a capable Australian club cricketer, told the Cricket Monthly that he would "be quite horrified" if the research was misinterpreted to suggest that there is a universally "right" and "wrong" batting stance. "My background is fully in skill acquisition, and I would be the strongest advocate of not using a 'one-size fits all' [technique]. I very much advocate needing to embrace what a player's own technique is, and to not change technique."

That being said, Mann believes that their research "suggests that there is actually an advantage to batting reverse-stance [that is, being top-hand natural] and it does provide a better chance of becoming a professional batsman". That hypothesis is supported by Chappell's postulation that "there is a very good chance" that top-hand natural batsmen have a natural technical advantage, "because it's probably more likely that they are going to use their top hand" in adopting a firm-top-hand-loose-bottom-hand grip.

Natural-hand dominance is unquestionably a salient factor in batsmanship. However, it is only one part of a much larger story. Every single cricketer and coach interviewed for this article underlined that batting is, in Chappell's words, "a whole body exercise". "Human beings", he explains, "are a lever system. The bat is the last lever in the chain." The legs "set up" the lever system and "what you want is a chain reaction where everything happens efficiently and effectively at the right time."

Trent Woodhill is a sports science graduate of the University of New South Wales and one of the most respected batting coaches in Australia, currently working with Melbourne Stars, Royal Challengers Bangalore, and David Warner. He expands the analysis of natural-side dominance to encompass the batsman's entire body, believing that most batsmen have a leg and a hip that they are naturally more comfortable hitting off. As a coach, he always tries to "work out where [an individual batsman's natural] dominance lies" so that he can help the batsman find the technique that's best for him.

Woodhill points out that Virat Kohli is, like Steve Waugh, a bottom-hand natural right-handed batsman who naturally prefers hitting off his back leg. This enables him to play outrageous shots, such as a back-foot square drive off a near yorker just outside off stump, directing the ball behind point with minimal foot movement. "As long as he transfers his weight through his dominant [back] foot," Woodhill says, "he can move his feet as little or as often as he likes."

By contrast Ricky Ponting, a bottom-hand natural right-handed batsman who naturally prefers hitting the ball off his front leg, "just in front of his left knee", could never play the squarish, back-foot drives and cuts that come so naturally to Kohli and Steve Waugh. But he could play other shots that they couldn't, such as the front-foot drive on the up through the covers, and his vicious trademark pull shot against balls that many other batsmen found too full to pull.

A batsman's naturally dominant hitting leg is not necessarily his naturally favoured kicking leg. Warner, Langer and Cowan kick a football with their right foot but are more comfortable hitting the ball off their back - left - foot. By contrast, Steve Smith, Hussey and Renshaw favour kicking a football with, and hitting a ball off, the same leg: their right.

Langer explains that he felt comfortable "pushing off his dominant [right kicking] leg to get back" to play his favourite cut and pull shots. Cowan thinks that his current-day preference for hitting off his back left foot is "just a product of first-class cricket. Even though I'm a front-foot player… [in that] I tell myself to go forward when the ball is released, I think that's so I can push back and play off my back [foot]." He adds that his ten-year-old uncoached self would have favoured hitting off his front foot.

This logic of interconnectedness applies with equal force to the hands themselves. Ian Renshaw, an expert in human movement and skill acquisition at Queensland University of Technology, who has worked extensively with CA as a consultant (and also happens to be Matt Renshaw's father), told the Cricket Monthlythat the batsman's two hands work as a unit. "It's not helpful to look at it as the hands working separately because they don't." Richard Clifton - Glenn Maxwell's personal coach - concurs: the hands "have to work together" as "one unit".

The clearest illustration of this is the straight drive for four or six. As Bradman explained in The Art of Cricket, "there should be a complete follow through" with the bottom hand snapping through fully to finish off the "full-blooded drive" so that, when the stroke is completed, the toe of the bat is pointing at the wicketkeeper's head. Ian Renshaw calls this the "Bradman finish".

Perhaps the finest exemplar of the Bradman finish today is Maxwell, who routinely drives fast bowlers for flat, straight sixes because, as Clifton explains, his top hand "pushes through" and his bottom hand "rips through", giving him both accuracy and power. Maxwell is, like Bradman, bottom-hand natural, which gives him an advantage over top-hand natural batsmen in this particular area - when playing front-foot drives, he finds it easier to rip his naturally stronger bottom hand through to achieve the Bradman finish.

Even the most ardent proponents of the strong-top-hand-loose-bottom-hand grip agree that the bottom hand comes into play for certain shots. As Bradman put it, "the left-hand [that is, the top hand] position must remain firm irrespective of the attempted stroke", but the strength of the bottom hand should vary depending on the shot being played. For example, the forward defensive should be played with a loose bottom hand, whereas the pull shot requires the bottom hand to "predominate" to complete the follow-through.

All four of the top-hand natural batsmen interviewed for this piece - Langer, Hussey, Cowan and Matt Renshaw - recall having good forward defensives as kids. Hussey was "not great" at whipping balls off his pads, and his sweep, pull and hook shots were "not dominant". Langer explains that, as a kid, "I wasn't a powerful hitter through the leg side because I wasn't as strong with my bottom hand" but "I used to use [my loose bottom hand] to control the ball through the leg side, to hit areas and gaps". So "instead of hitting a lot of balls through midwicket, I used to get a lot of balls down to fine leg". Even as a world-class Test batsman, who by the end of his career "swept everything" against spin, Langer found that, "instead of a hard sweep in front of square leg", his sweep shot was "more a lap shot" hit behind square leg. "I tend to just caress it through the leg side," Langer explains, "because I was more top-hand dominant."

Interestingly, despite being a top-hand natural batsman Cowan found that, as a kid, the shot that he played most easily and consistently was the bottom hand-dependent work off his pads. "I think," he says, "that that's a left-handed batsman thing" - junior right-arm bowlers tend to bowl a lot of balls at junior left-handed batsmen's pads - "rather than [a] top- or bottom-hand [thing]".

Cowan and Langer have always favoured pulling and cutting, shots that require their naturally weaker bottom hand to snap through. There are clear environmental and physiological reasons for that - because Cowan and Langer were small for their age, they tended to receive a lot of short balls and had to find a way to counter that; and since they were both naturally more comfortable hitting the ball off their back foot, the pull and hook shots became the natural solutions to that challenge.

Neither Cowan nor Matt Renshaw swept much when they were kids, and Renshaw found it difficult to whip balls off his pads. Even today, Renshaw reckons that his reverse sweep and his switch hit, which derive their power from his naturally stronger top hand, are better than his conventional sweep.

On a sunny Melbourne afternoon in early March, I chatted with the Victorian batsman Peter Handscomb over a coffee on Chapel Street. As we were wrapping up, he shared his thoughts on the next stage of batting's evolution - future generations of batsmen will routinely practise batting both left- and right-handed, and then, come game time, select whichever hand is optimal for a particular bowler.

Two weeks later, in Australia's opening game of the World T20 campaign, Handscomb's friend and Victoria team-mate Maxwell confronted a left-arm orthodox spinner, Mitchell Santner, bowling around the wicket on a slow, gripping pitch in Dharamsala. For the first three deliveries of the 15th over, Maxwell took guard right-handed, then switched to left-handed at around the time Santner jumped into his delivery stride. The left-handed Maxwell worked the first ball with a straight bat through midwicket for two, blocked the second ball (a yorker on off stump) and mishit a sweep off the third ball (a leg-stump full toss) to backward square leg for a single.

On air, Michael Slater was left scratching his head ("What is going on? Aw, again, well, as I said, I reckon he makes batting hard"), but his fellow commentator Tom Moody pointed out that there was an undeniable method to this seeming madness. "Maxwell's thinking, I'm assuming, that he's trying to hit with the spin… " Matt Renshaw didn't watch the game live, but when I explained the match scenario and pitch conditions, he was quick to say: "That would've been probably one of the best options at the time for him."

Thirty-four years earlier, when confronted in the Ranji Trophy by a left-arm orthodox spinner turning it square on a raging turner, Sunil Gavaskar switched to batting left-handed (while continuing to bat right-handed against the other bowlers). Incredibly, he compiled a patient, unbeaten 18 to secure a draw.

Unlike Gavaskar, though, Maxwell only batted left-handed for three balls. A week later, Woodhill - who works with Handscomb and Maxwell at Melbourne Stars - prophesied that, sooner or later "there will be that unique player… who will come out and bat left-handed when the left-arm spinner's on and then when the offspinner comes on, he'll bat right-handed".

Fast forward another three weeks and the scientist David Mann told me of his slightly different, but related, theorem:

"Wherever possible, it's good to actually be able to bat both ways for as long as possible. I mean, at some point you probably do need to specialise. But my initial observation in this whole area was actually of David Warner. So we used to play indoor cricket together when he was young and we would bat together… and he could bat equally well right- or left-handed. Even at that stage [when Warner was about 13 or 14 years old], it wasn't clear which he would actually end up preferring to do."

At least four current elite batsmen in Australia - Warner, Finch, Matt Renshaw and Maxwell - routinely practise batting the other way round. None of the 12 cricketers and coaches interviewed for this piece said they had noticed any Australian kids regularly practising batting both left- and right-handed. However, Hussey observed that thanks to batsmen like Warner and Maxwell, "I probably have noticed kids more often turn around and muck around with batting both left- and right-handed."

In Woodhill's opinion, one factor hindering the evolutionary step of batsmen regularly practising left- and right-handed is current protective equipment: "Right-handed gloves are so different to left-handed gloves, they just haven't got the same protection. And same with the thigh pads as well - small inner [back] thigh pad and a larger [front] one. So until gear is developed to be able to do both, there's a physical risk involved [in batting the other way round]." It came as little surprise when Clifton subsequently said that, as a teenager, Maxwell owned a left-handed thigh pad.

Both Matt Renshaw and Woodhill believe that, at some point in the future, batsmen will regularly switch hands. Indeed, from a broader historical perspective, it's surprising that it hasn't happened already. Highly proficient switch hitters have been part of Major League Baseball since at least the late 19th century, and prior to the 1990s, many of Australia's finest batsmen, from Victor Richardson to Harvey to Norm O'Neill to Bill Lawry to Ian Chappell to Greg Chappell to Border to Brad Hodge, spent their winters playing high-level baseball.

If the latest generation of Australian batsmen has a standard-bearer, it is the 20-year-old Renshaw, the fifth highest run scorer in last summer's Shield, runner-up for the Shield Player of the Season award, and the youngest batsman picked in this winter's Australia A squad. The left-handed Renshaw is, in many senses, a classical opener. He is patient and enjoys batting for long periods. He doesn't hold a Big Bash contract, is yet to make his List A debut for Queensland, and his season strike rate of 40.95 was the lowest of last summer's top ten Shield run scorers. Those facts are fairly well known.

What is less well known is that Renshaw has switch hit a six at Lord's, a shot that came as little surprise to those who know that he has been practising batting right-handed since he was a boy. "I can't really remember whether it was [my idea] or Dad's," he says. "I can just remember watching people play reverse sweeps and I thought that would be pretty cool. And so I started trying to bat right-handed."

He has had both the switch hit and the reverse sweep in his armoury since he was a teenager. Of the two, he is "more comfortable playing the reverse sweep because when you go for the switch hit, you have to swap everything and the bowler can change where he is going to bowl it". He'll only play the higher risk switch hit if there is a good reason to do so. He did it at Lord's because "it was an offspinner [bowling] to a short boundary on the off side".

Renshaw is yet to see any batsman do what Handscomb predicted that the next generation would do - change hands during a game to suit the bowler they're facing - but says, without skipping a beat, "I've definitely talked about it with Dad".

Cricket - Playing spin well is a state of mind

A batsman should look to dominate, and importantly, not fear the turning delivery

Ian Chappell

October 5, 2014

VVS Laxman was an artist at hitting the legspinner wide of mid-on, against the spin © AFP

I was bemused by Justin Langer's mystifying recent explanation of how Australian batsmen struggle with spin bowling on the subcontinent. "It's almost like Indians have chillies from a very early age, therefore if you eat chilli it doesn't really bother you," Langer said. "But if we eat chilli, it burns our mouth, which is the same while playing spin."

I acquired a taste for spicy food at 19 but learned to play spin bowling from about eight. I retain my enjoyment of spicy food to this day and those lessons I was taught as a youngster stood me in good stead as my career progressed, culminating in a few months at finishing school - a tour of India.

To me, it is at a young age that the real problem lies with modern Australian batsmen, and it is here that the roots of their disconnect with playing good spin bowling lie: the coaches overlook the correct footwork fundamentals.

The first things I was told about playing spin bowling were among the most important:

1) Don't worry about the wicketkeeper when you leave your crease, because if you do it means you are thinking about missing the ball.

2) You might as well be stumped by three yards rather than three inches.

To make a real difference to a spin bowler's length you have to advance a decent distance, whilst coming out of your crease only a little generally improves the delivery.

I remember asking Shane Warne after Australia's 2001 tour of India, where VVS Laxman tamed the legspinner: "How do you think you bowled?"

"I don't think I bowled that badly," was his response.

"You didn't," I assured him, "it's just that when Laxman advances three metres and hits you through mid-on and then the next delivery is a little higher and shorter and he's quickly on the back foot and pulls the ball, it's excellent footwork, not bad bowling."

	If you can walk and chew gum at the same time, then you can eat spicy food and also play spin bowling. The trick is to acquire a taste for the former and be taught the latter correctly at a young age

During that series, Laxman used his feet better than anyone I have seen to hit the ball against the spin through wide mid-on; it was exhilarating stuff.

However, you don't have to leave the crease to be successful at playing good spin bowling. Two of the best batsmen I've seen, Garfield Sobers and Graeme Pollock, both played mostly from the crease, but importantly their footwork was decisive and they weren't fooled in judging length.

Australian batsmen haven't always struggled against good spin bowling. Neil Harvey was acknowledged as a twinkle-toed batsman who was never out stumped in his Test career, and the dashing Doug Walters is the best player of offspin bowling I have seen. There were many others in that period who were extremely efficient when it came to playing good spin.

Playing spin bowling well is a state of mind. To succeed, a batsman has to be decisive, look to dominate, have a plan and not fear the turning delivery. Once I learned on the 1969 tour of India that because of the slower nature of the pitches you had a fraction more time than you first thought, and that when the ball turned a long way it provided opportunities for the batsman as well as the bowler, I never again worried about prodigious spin. I was often dismissed but I never again feared the turning ball; I looked upon it as a challenge to be enjoyed.

If you can walk and chew gum at the same time, then you can eat spicy food and also play spin bowling. The trick is to acquire a taste for the former and be taught the latter correctly at a young age.

It's all down to the feet - The cornerstone of batting technique is foot position and movement

Martin Crowe in Cricinfo

March 12, 2014

Sachin Tendulkar had the ideal natural stance: poised and ready to move © PA Photos

Every year, as I watch and marvel at the finest batsmen on view, new insights emerge. The art of batting provides subjects for a mighty debate. Allow me to share my latest observations.

The first advice I recall getting when I started as a lad was to line up "side-on" to the bowler, feet shoulder-width apart, shoulder tucked into the head, bat placed behind back foot. I was taught to get the front elbow up, and to play in the V. Everything was about hitting the ball, but I could only do it through mid-off, as that's where my body aimed. Today, batting successfully is, from a technical viewpoint, with the odd rare exception, really about one vital thing - footwork.

-----Also by Martin Crowe
To bat right get your mind right
----

Batting, in a nutshell, is about moving the body in reaction to a moving ball. Once in the right position, it is only then that relevance to hitting the ball applies, to stroke the ball into a gap in the field. The emphasis is to focus on what is required to execute proper movement to a moving ball. Therefore, the essential role of the stance is to be poised and ready to move athletically.

To move athletically, you must use your feet. To get the best out of your feet, the weight must be on the ball of each foot, for that is where the energy, the springy muscle, is, not the arch or the heel. Often the toes are referred to, yet it is in fact the ball of the foot, the round, sinewy area at the base of the big toe, that is the most vital part of the body when it comes to batting.

As you stand awaiting the bowler's delivery, the balls of the feet are priority, poised, ready to move quickly and efficiently. The best way to get on to the balls of the feet is to flex the knees. Straight legs send the weight to the wider part of the foot, including the heel, a sure way to slow movement. By flexing the knees and feeling the pressure on the balls of the feet, the body has its engine room fired up and ready to pounce. When I think of quick footwork I think of Don Bradman. He, better than anyone, showed that fast, efficient foot movements that facilitated getting into the correct body position was the key to batting.

What is the correct head position? In the modern day, with so much analysis, greater fitness levels, reverse swing and the 15-degree chucking toleration, it is critical for batsmen to play straight for long periods. Bowlers and coaches spend their time focusing on hitting the top of off stump. Therefore, more than at any time in history, I believe the position of the head has a key role in knowing where your off stump is at the moment the ball is released, aiding the ability to play pitch-straight.

It is my strong view that the outside eye (right eye for a right-hand batsman, left for the lefties) should be level with the other one and in a position to see the ball leave the bowler's hand, and not aiming at mid-off or looking over or past the nose to see the ball. The outside eye ensures the batsman is getting the best view of the ball release, knows where his off stump is, and provides an overall feeling of total balance and poise, allowing for the potential to play straight. This analysis of the outside eye is a lot different to the old days, when playing back was more the norm, mainly due to uncovered pitches and no protective equipment.

With the outside eye looking at the ball release, the shoulders will be slightly open towards the non-striker. As we work down the body, if the eyes are level as the ball is released, the hips will be slightly open also. From the hips to the flexed knees, to the weight on the balls of the feet, you have the ideal natural stance, poised, ready to move. Think Sachin Tendulkar.

At this point, with the body in the correct poised position, the bat can be placed into the mix. Imitating top batsmen who hold their bats aloft can be a dangerous exercise if not understood correctly. When the bat is positioned up high behind the body as the bowler runs in, there is potential for the hips, shoulders and head to all close off and for the outside eye to aim at mid-off. Also, if standing too tall, the weight can easily shift on to the heels. With respect, recall Nick Compton last year, when he was struggling. It is the balls of the feet that the weight must be on, not the heels; flexed knees, not straight-legged.

By holding the bat down low, with relaxed arms and soft hands, the bat has no influence on the ideal body position that has been set up. In fact, when the bat is held low, it encourages a slight crouch, enabling flex in the knees, weight on the balls of the feet. Often I see youngsters going into their stance with too much emphasis on holding the bat up high, not on getting ready to move. This is self-defeating because without the body moving into the correct position via the feet, the actual hitting will be flawed anyway.

Graham Gooch had a very effective upright stance, bat held high. Yet he had slightly open hips, eyes perfect, knees flexed, weight on the balls of his feet. He worked on this exhaustively. Those who copied him didn't work on the subtle yet important aspects of eye position, balls-of-feet pressure, and on retaining the ability to move quickly and freely, as Gooch did. For a big man who had obvious balance issues at times in his career, he carved out an amazing legacy.

There are many unique examples of how to bat well with different stances. AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis provide examples of setting the stance nicely, with slightly open hips and front foot, bat held off the ground but not high, poised, ready to move. Virat Kohli stands with a great head position - quite tall, yet at the moment the bowler gathers, he flexes his knees enough to tap his bat and activate his ability to move. He is a wonderful example to all. Allan Border dipped his body at the last second to create flex in the knees.

The bat tap can be an important trigger for batsmen. It was for me. As I tapped the bat near my right foot, I felt the whole body spark into action. I once tried holding my bat up and couldn't get the same ready-to-move feeling. I preferred to flex and crouch a little. I liked the position of a boxer, of a tennis player. I marvelled at the stances of Don Bradman, Greg Chappell, Viv Richards, David Gower and Sunil Gavaskar, and the sublime movements they made. I liked, too, the way Javed Miandad stood at the crease, alert and ready. The best stance to spinners I have seen was his open one, suited to every possible line from well outside leg to well outside off. To see and then move accordingly.

	It is the ball of the foot, the round, sinewy area at the base of the big toe, that is the most vital part of the body when it comes to batting

And now for the most important part, the actual footwork needed to scoring runs, to staying long periods at the crease. Remember, the stance is set to know where the off stump is and to be poised to move. Then the ball is released and the eyesight picks up the movement of the ball. As it does, the brain sends a signal to the feet and body, to move. The key here is the plural: both feet. With all the best players, both feet are moving in some way, even subtly, to every ball they face. Even when they leave the ball, the best players will use both feet to ensure that they know fully where the ball is in relation to the stumps.

When a ball is full, the back foot loads up and activates the front-foot step. For Chappell, he expected the full ball, loading up the back foot in preparation. As the front foot steps forward, the back foot joins in on the fluent movement, coming up on to the toes, even off the ground, to assist in completing the whole body movement, and shot. Think a Chappell on-drive, with back foot flicked up to balance and complete the fluent front-foot shot.

The back-foot release, as I call it, is critical to every front-foot shot. For some strange reason, throughout New Zealand, coaching demands the back foot stays still, heel on the ground, for supposed stability. This only encourages a half body movement, forcing the hands and bat to take over prematurely, leading to all sorts of problems. This, in my view, is completely wrong and a real concern as I go around schools and clubs. A more important view is from Bradman himself, as shown page after page in his book The Art of Cricket. Every frame of footage of him shows both feet activated and fluent.

To play straight off the front foot, past the bowler, the back foot must play a part in aligning the whole body, aiming everything down the pitch and to complete the movement and straight stroke. As the feet and body work in unison in completing the positioning, the bat comes through straight and late - the best shot in the game. When the feet and body stop short of proper positioning, there are problems. For instance, when the back foot is rooted to the spot, the front-foot step falls short and often to the off side, encouraging the bat to come through early and mistime, often lifting, or with the batsman playing across his front pad.

When a ball is bowled short, the front foot quickly presses down, sending the back foot into position. As the back foot lands square to the wicket, the front foot releases onto the toe, or even off the ground out of the way, hips open, to ensure the entire body movement is complete and the striking of the ball is easy below the eyes.

The front foot plays a huge part in all back-foot play - often it is just about getting it out of the way of hitting the ball - and also in providing balance to the body as a shot is played. When you imagine a pull or cut shot, think Gordon Greenidge or Brian Lara; their front leg lifts up into a fully flexed position off the ground, as they swivel on the back foot, striking the ball with balance and full force.

To spin, the best players, like Michael Clarke or Miandad, use their feet at all times, either coming down to the pitch of the ball or quickly pressing off the front foot to score off the back foot. To defend a good spinner off the front foot, think of Ross Taylor, who uses the back foot to always align his body and his bat, to play pitch-straight, making the bowler field the ball.

Footwork, the use of both feet for every ball, is the absolute cornerstone of batting.

Saeed Ajmal and the art of the pause

Why Pakistan's lead bowler is like an Argentinian football midfielder

SB Tang in Cricinfo

March 10, 2013

	Ajmal: master of the hook © Getty Images  Enlarge
Related Links Players/Officials: Saeed Ajmal Matches: South Africa v Pakistan at Cape Town Teams: Pakistan

In Argentina, they often speak of the importance of"the pause" both to their music and their football. On the football pitch, "the pause" is the moment when the designated playmaker, positioned between the lines of midfield and attack, places his foot on the ball, looks up, and pauses - in that moment, everything stops in the eye of the playmaker's mind. Out in the physical world, the expectant crowd holds their breath, waiting for the playmaker to pick out a pass.

In that instant, all futures are possible. The playmaker - one man in a team of 11 - chooses the pass to play, the path to take. He and he alone authors the team's collective fate. Like a Jedi Knight, a good playmaker must be capable of seeing things before they happen - the angled run the centre-forward is about to make behind his marking defender, the surge down the touchline that the full-back wants to make to create the overload, and perhaps even which of his own advancing attackers the opposition's spare defender intends to cover.

Thus, one man carries the weight of his team's destiny on his shoulders. That is why, in Argentinian football, the designated playmaker, the wearer of the No. 10 shirt, occupies such a special cultural place - he performs a duty that is almost sacred in its importance.

Watching Saeed Ajmal run through the world's best batting line-up in the second Test at Newlands last month, my mind turned to a different kind of pause - that in Ajmal's bowling action. Like most spinners, he approaches the crease at a smooth, comfortable canter, but unlike most spinners, just before he releases the ball, he pauses for a fraction of a second - like a claymation character in a Wallace & Gromit film - instead of driving his non-pivoting leg through the crease in one fluid motion, as the coaching manuals recommend.

However, there is a purpose behind this pause, a method to the seeming madness: the pause strips the batsman of one of his primary tools of attack and defence - his feet. Ordinarily a batsman using his feet to come down the pitch to a spinner will start his move just before or after the spinner releases the ball. By pausing just before the point of release, Ajmal makes it more likely that he will be able to see the batsman start to move before he releases the ball (thereby enabling him to change his delivery accordingly) and, more importantly, makes the batsman believe that Ajmal will be able to see him coming and adjust his delivery accordingly. This in turn causes the batsman to decide not to advance down the wicket at all, thereby removing a crucial weapon from his armoury.

In many ways phenomena like the pause are as characteristic of Pakistan's cricket culture as of Argentina's football culture. If Ajmal had suffered the misfortune of being English, there can be little doubt that the distinctive pause in his bowling action, not to mention his doosra, would have been coached out of him. As Maurice Holmes, the English mystery spinner unjustly hounded out of the English professional game at the age of 22, explained: "There will always be the English view, that something different is not necessarily something good. There are people who tend to take the traditional view that things can and should only be done in one way."

By contrast, in Australia and on the subcontinent, the finest cricketers are largely self-taught and allowed, if not encouraged, by their coaches to do what comes naturally to them, to trust their homespun techniques, to express their unique and abundant god-given talents. As Muttiah Muralitharan explained to the Cricketerrecently: "In Sri Lanka we find so many unique bowlers because we bowl naturally and are not over-coached." In Australia, Shane Warne had in Terry Jenner a coach and mentor who gave him the freedom to bowl naturally, even when that involved a substantial deviation from technical orthodoxy.

	Ajmal simultaneously functions as both strike bowler and workhorse, artist and blue-collar labourer

At this moment Ajmal is 35 years of age and at the very peak of his powers. At Newlands he produced match figures of 10 for 147. The number and identity of the wickets were impressive in themselves, the exquisite manner of their extraction even more so. During South Africa's successful final-innings chase, Jacques Kallis, arguably the finest allrounder in history, and Faf du Plessis, among the form batsmen in world cricket, were left pinioned to their crease, like the hapless, scripted victims of a WWE cage match, after being trapped plumb in front by flat, fast offbreaks. Indeed, such was the thrall in which Ajmal held the South African batsmen, we were treated to the sight of AB de Villiers doing a decent Mesut Özil impersonation, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull as he tried to decipher one of Ajmal's deliveries from the non-striker's end.

The comparison of the pause in Ajmal's bowling with the pause in Argentinian football is apposite in several respects, not least of which is the nomenclature: in Argentina, the designated playmaker is known as theenganche - literally, "the hook". How apt. For Ajmal, like all masters of the art of spin bowling, doesn't just reel in his hooked catch - no, he personally baits the hook, dangles it before his intended catch, induces the bite and then gleefully reels in his victim.

There is no better example of this than his dismissal of Hashim Amla in the second innings at Newlands. Amla was well set and cruising serenely on 54 not out, having helped steer South Africa to 146 for 3, within touching distance of their victory target of 182. Ajmal tossed one up, wide of off, nice and high above Amla's eyeline, giving him the false comfort of off-driving him for four - and the crowd the opportunity to derive aesthetic pleasure from the shot. Ajmal's next ball was just a tad higher and a fraction slower. Not even a batsman of Amla's class could resist such a delectable temptation. He unfurled his gorgeous, trademark, flourishing cover drive… and connected with nothing but air. The ball, a conventional offbreak dropping steeply, sailed through Amla's wide open gate and clipped the bails over middle and off. Amla, as good a batsman as there is right now, was left floundering and grasping for something just out of his reach, like a child straining on tiptoe to reach a jar of lollies stored on the high shelf in the kitchen.

Much like the enganche, in the moment of the pause, Ajmal carries the enormous weight of his team's fate, if not on his shoulders then certainly in his long, supple sculptor's fingers. Ajmal is not quite the sole wicket-taker in the way that the enganche is the sole creator, but there is no doubt that in the current Pakistan Test XI he is far and away the primary wicket-taker. Ajmal took took ten of the 16 South African wickets that fell in the Cape Town Test match. When Pakistan beat the world's then No. 1 Test team in the UAE in 2012, he took 24 of the 60 English wickets that fell. At Newlands, the only bowling support that Pakistan could muster for Ajmal came in the form of a 34-year-old "fast-medium" opening bowler who bowls slower than Australia's current wicketkeeper; a raw, no-ball prone, seven-foot-one-inch giant making his Test debut, and a solid one-day bowler whose Test bowling average, after nearly 50 Tests, remains stuck in the mid-30s.

Thus the comparison of Ajmal with the enganche is inapposite in one crucial respect. The enganche in the classic Argentinian 4-3-1-2 formation is neither a leader nor a hard labourer; rather, as Hugo Asch put it, he "is an artist", "a romantic hero, a poet, a misunderstood genius with the destiny of a myth" who "only works under shelter, with a court in his thrall and an environment that protects him from the evils of this world". Indeed, that is the very purpose of the 4-3-1-2 formation - to protect the enganche. The bank of three behind him performs the hard physical labour of tackling, running, chasing and harrying for him, so that he is free to create art. Leadership is provided not by the enganche, but by hard-running, hard-tackling holding midfielders, such as Javier Mascherano in Argentina's 2010 World Cup team, or robust defenders, such as Roberto Perfumo in Argentina's 1966 World Cup team.

Ajmal, by contrast, is the very definition of a leader and a hard labourer. There are no other world-class bowlers in the current Pakistan Test XI to carry his water for him. He simultaneously functions as both strike bowler and workhorse, artist and blue-collar labourer.

When he claimed his sixth South African first-innings wicket at Newlands Test with a classic offspinner's delivery - a slower, flighted offbreak pitching well outside the left-hander Dean Elgar's off stump, which invited the drive and duly drew the edge to slip - Ramiz Raja said on commentary: "He's a champion, Saeed Ajmal."

That he is.

The secrets of success against spin bowlers

Dean Jones

NOW that Australia has finished its Test cricket for the summer, the Australian batsmen have to have a good think on how they will play in India next month.

This series is massive to a lot of players and could be a great tour for the Australians if they bat well against the Indian spinners. India is not in good shape and if Australia can get a win early, we might win the series. But a lot of work needs to be done.

India will no doubt prepare turning pitches or ''Bunsen burners'' as we like to call them. The Australian batsmen must start preparing now by practising on substandard practice pitches. These will find your weakness very quickly and will really make you watch the ball.

When you play against fast bowling you need to have physical courage to get behind the ball. The top half of your body is always under pressure, ducking and weaving short-pitched deliveries. 

When you play against quality spinners, you must have mental courage to be successful. And your footwork, or bottom half of your body, must be supple and nimble to move quickly to get to the pitch of the ball.

Playing against great spinners was always fun for me. I was fortunate enough to meet the great Lindsay Hassett, who was widely regarded as the greatest batsman to play spin.

Don Bradman just loved the way Hassett played havoc against great spinners. I asked Lindsay why he was so successful at playing spinners. ''Deano, watch their ball release, watch the rotation of the seam, and try to get down the track and hit the ball on the full. If you can't get to the pitch of the ball, then play them off the back foot. It's easy!''

Neil Harvey played the same way. Harvey was known to run at the spinners once the spinner started his run-up! That's how keen he was to use his feet.

So I thought I would play the same way. I quickly realised that spinners don't like you running at them. They say they do, but in reality they don't. I measured how far I could dance down the pitch. It was 2.8 metres. I even did something a bit naughty without the umpires and opposition knowing. I used to place marks on the side of the pitch to help me see how far I could get down the pitch. It also helped me commit to get to the pitch of the ball. I also learnt that I must always make my first stride to the ball a big one. No half-steps. Mark Waugh was awesome at this. Graham Yallop, Allan Border, Brian Lara and Michael Clarke are no different.

Using your feet to the spinners can be very taxing on your body, so you need to be very fit. I often think batting against spinners is a bit like playing chess. If you are worried about bat-pad fieldsmen catching you out, then you must strike up a plan to remove them. It might be a lofted shot over mid-off, which might get rid of the bat-pad on the offside. And a few sweep shots might get rid of the silly mid-on and he might be placed at backward square or short fine leg.

It is just about playing a few shots early to get the fieldsmen where you want them, and then just pick them off with singles for the rest of the day.

So here is where the mental courage comes in. You must practice the lofted shot. You must have the courage to play it early, so you can get the bat-padders away. I must confess I loved hitting bat-pad fieldsmen in the shins. It always gave me a giggle. Sorry, that was just me.

When spinners have really got you under pressure, you must have a shot or plan that you can use to get off strike. Mine was running at the spinners and running a single to mid-off or mid-on. Border, Matty Hayden and Mark Taylor swept when under pressure. David Boon used to walk across his stumps and work the ball behind square leg. You need to find a shot that you can play blindfolded to get off strike.

Tactically, spinners love bowling maidens. So you must look to hurt them early in their over. Don't allow them to bowl when they want. Control the momentum and tempo of the game and let them bowl to you when you are ready. You are the boss and let them know that.

I always asked my playing partner to back up very close to the stumps. If I did hit a ball straight, I wanted my batting partner to get in his way. In other words, he can only field on his side of the pitch.

Basically, every batsman has to learn what works for him and what doesn't. If you are hitting the ball to the field a lot, just change your guard or play everything off the back foot.

I had some wonderful battles with Shane Warne at practice. We would bet $50 for every dismissal. I wanted to bat against him on the worst practice pitches and it was the best fun. Yes, Warnie won a lot of money off me, but I was ready for anyone who bowled spin to me. A trick I learnt was to not go with the spin if it kicks or spits at you. Just hold your original line with your bat and not follow the ball. You will get caught bat-pad very quickly if you go with the spin.

I also practised a lot by playing everything off the back foot. It is just great fun.

Just for anyone asking who were the best spinners I played against. The best off-spinner I faced was Saqlain Mushtaq. The best left-arm orthodox was Maninder Singh. The best leggie was Warne. Mind you, Abdul Qadir was pretty good in Pakistan, with no DRS and local umpires.