One fault at a time
The clinic.
One thing that keeps getting you out, followed all the way to what to do about it on Saturday.
Why one at a time
One thing that keeps getting you out, explained and fixed.
Five things to fix is the same as none, because you cannot think about five things while a ball is arriving. So these take one at a time, say what it is costing you rather than that it is wrong, and finish with drills.
The clinics
Each one also sits on the subject page it belongs to.
The clinic
You are standing open
Your chest faces the bowler instead of square leg. That is why you score to leg, and why straight balls bowl you.
Where your chest is pointing
Side on
Your chest faces square leg, straight across the pitch. Your front shoulder points down the pitch at the bowler and you look at him past it.
Open
Your chest has turned towards the bowler. Your front shoulder came round with it, so now it points at midwicket.
Which one you are
Stand in your stance. Get somebody to stand at the bowler’s end and tell you what they can see. Your badge means open. Your shoulder and your sleeve means side on.
It is scoring you runs
Your shoulders are turned towards the leg side before the bowler lets go, so half the work is done. Balls on your pads go round to fine leg. Short ones go over midwicket. On a small ground that is a lot of runs, and you have made a lot of them.
Your best shot works. Here is what it costs.
It cannot come down straight from there
The path
Your arms hang off your chest. Your chest points at midwicket, so your arms swing at midwicket. The bat crosses the line of a straight ball instead of coming down it.
The face
You lift the bat and the face turns out towards second slip. Coming down, it swings in from out near cover instead of passing close to your front pad.
A bat coming down beside your pad has one job. Yours has two.
Arrive on time, and have the face square by that same moment. The ball takes half a second to reach you.
Miss the second one and the ball comes off an angled blade. That is the shot that loops to midwicket when you meant to hit it straight.
Neither of them was a good ball
The straight one
Your front foot goes across, so your pad sits in front of the stumps and the bat has to come round the outside of it. For one instant the bat crosses the line. Either side of that instant your pad is the only thing there, and the ball hits it.
Your pad is standing where your bat should be.
The one that leaves you a fraction
Your bat is out near cover. Your pad has not moved. There is a gap between them, and the ball moves off your pad straight into it and hits off stump.
Your outside edge never comes into it, because your bat is never near your outside edge.
One ball went straight on. One moved the width of a stump. Neither was a good ball.
A captain will work this out
He watches for two overs and sees that every run you make goes between midwicket and fine leg. So he puts a man at deep midwicket, another at fine leg, and tells the bowler to aim at the stumps.
Two men are now standing where you score, and he is bowling where you are weakest. You stop scoring. Then you get out.
Change your shoulder, not your hands
Leave the backlift alone
Somebody will tell you to lift the bat straight. Ignore that. Brian Lara lifted his out towards point and Steve Smith’s goes out towards gully, and both of them bring it down beside the front pad with the face square. Your lift is like theirs. Your downswing is where it goes wrong.
Move two things
Point your front shoulder down the pitch at the bowler and put your chin over the top of it. Then take your back foot back a fraction towards leg stump.
That turns you side on. Side on, the bat comes down straight because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Leave your hands. They are hard to change and the shoulder does most of the work for you.
What right looks like
Sachin Tendulkar drove straighter than anybody. The thing he picked out about Virat Kohli was that he presents the straight bat: the full face arrives facing the bowler, early, and the wrists never have to rescue it.
Rahul Dravid closes the gap. Bat and pad go down together, so the ball that moved a fraction has nowhere to go.
Six drills, in this order
The first three change your shoulder. The last three need it changed already.
- Take your stance and have somebody at the bowler’s end say what they can see. Badge means open. Shoulder and sleeve means side on.
- Lay a rope from middle stump straight down the pitch, shadow bat twenty times, and watch where the toe of the bat crosses it. Outside the line to inside it is the fault, and you will have seen it yourself.
- Stand a spare stump upright a bat’s width outside your front pad, on the off side, and play forward defensives past it. Coming round from outside the line hits the stump. Coming down beside the pad misses it.
- Take your bottom hand off the handle and play twenty balls top hand only. The bottom hand is what drags the bat across. It will feel terrible, and the terrible feeling is the fault.
- Put two cones four metres apart straight down the ground and only count a ball hit between them. Leg side scores nothing, however well you middle it.
- Film thirty seconds from the bowler’s end at knee height. You will see it straight away.
Two things that matter more than the drills
Change one thing. For the next month the only thing in your head walking out is your front shoulder.
And the runs will dry up first. You are giving up a leg side game that works for a straight game that does not exist yet, and everybody who fixes this goes through that.
Keep hitting over midwicket. Just be able to play straight when the ball is straight, so that going leg side is a choice you make.
Brian Lara’s and Steve Smith’s backlifts, and the line about Sachin Tendulkar on Virat Kohli, came through search summaries rather than from the original pages, none of which could be opened from where this was written. They are on the sources page as attributed rather than quoted.
More will be added as they come up, because they come from actual innings rather than from a syllabus. If something keeps happening to you and it is not here yet, that is the next one.