Representational picture of batsman Virat Singh enjoying a ahead defence throughout a Duleep Trophy
| Photo Credit: S.S. Kumar
One of the best pictures I noticed on a cricket area got here off the bat of Sunil Gavaskar. The bowler was Imran Khan who was quick and had been troubling Indian batsmen sequence after sequence. The venue was Chennai the place that India-Pakistan Test was played.
Imran’s supply rose sharply, and so too in a sense did the batsman who moved superbly into line again and throughout, stood tiptoe, met the ball within the high half of the bat and dropped it at his toes. I can’t keep in mind if Imran applauded, however from exterior the boundary, a handful of spectators did.
I used to be within the media field the place we didn’t do such issues, however in my thoughts I saluted Gavaskar. That backfoot defence was corresponding to something the attacking participant of the day, Viv Richards had hit. Both defence and assault can be sexy, and converse of the batter’s management.
A decade and extra earlier, as a schoolboy cricketer, I watched fascinated as Alvin Kallicharan of the West Indies played the Indian spinners Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Erapalli Prasanna and Srinivas Venkatraghavan useless in defence on a tender wicket in Bengaluru.
Eknath Solkar, together with his prehensile grasp was ready at quick leg for a mistake, for the one ball the batsman couldn’t maintain down, however it by no means got here. Kallicharan made a basic century, the very best of three in a match the place Gordon Greenidge and Clive Lloyd too hit a whole bunch. Lloyd’s was all energy and vigour.
A shot of the previous?
Watching batsmen within the IPL strike the ball with startling energy and hit sixes whereas off stability and with such confidence, one wonders if the day of the defensive participant is previous. Cheteshwar Pujara may be the final in a line India has produced, a line stretching again to Vijay Merchant via Rahul Dravid and Gavaskar. And not simply that. The day of the nice defensive shot may also be previous, batters deciding that defence is merely the final resort of a approach based mostly on assault.
In the final yr or so, it has been fantastic watching the so-called ‘Baz-ball’ model of cricket played by England, full of batters who create strokes and runs out of deliveries that may have been defended a technology again. Perhaps the mentality owes one thing to T20 cricket which is a sport of the doable; maybe it owes a lot to the temperament of the captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum. It has seen extra matches ending in victories and defeats. The draw has been just about eradicated from the workforce’s vocabulary.
Will England be capable of bat via 5 periods to attract a Test match? We will know when the Ashes sequence begins in June. Man to man, England have the higher workforce, and in house circumstances and given their current file should start favourites. Yet ought to Australia push them into a nook and batting for survival is the necessity of the hour, how will England cope? They have the batsmen, definitely, with Joe Root among the many best there was. But it’s a query of mentality. Somehow, defensive batters discover it simpler to assault than attacking batters to defend.
Counter-attack
When the West Indies carried a truckload of quick bowlers who have been a hazard to life and limb within the 70s and 80s, defending was probably not an possibility. Everybody has a plan until they’re punched within the mouth, mentioned the heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. Something comparable may be mentioned about plans towards Malcolm Marshall. Andy Roberts, Mike Holding, Patrick Patterson and others. The finest response, many batters felt, was to assault and rating as many runs as rapidly as doable earlier than that inevitable ball on the stumps or physique. It was a approach even the nice Don Bradman used towards Bodyline — counter-attack was the very best defence.
To defend or assault is a query that has generally been given a ethical tinge. This is nonsense. It is dependent upon the circumstances and wishes of the workforce, other than the batsman’s personal temperament. But you can not play any format of the sport for lengthy with out a wholesome combination of the 2 in your arsenal.
It is never that spectators keep in mind a defensive stroke, whereas those that ship the ball crusing over the boundary are simply recalled. But when the latter is the extra frequent, it is typically enjoyable to assume again to the one which didn’t get away into the stands.
