BATTING TECHNIQUE

Why trying to bat like Smith may be a fool's errand

by Garfield Robinson • Published on

Amla scored fifties in both innings of the Johannesburg Test. © Getty

"I tell you what," announced Michael Holding, doing commentary on the third South Africa India Test at Johannesburg, "with Hashim Amla batting the way he has been batting and them unable to find a way of defeating his new tactic, perhaps what they need to do is just attack the stumps and have three men on the boundary on the leg side, fine leg, deep backward square and a midwicket, to make sure he only gets a single. Get him off strike. Try and get out Quinton de Kock, Vernon Philander and the rest."

The new tactic to which the great fast bowler was referring is Amla's trigger movement of going way across the stumps, ending up some way outside off. It is a technique that bears some resemblance to that of Steven Smith. The Australian captain, currently the top-ranked batsman in Tests, has been wildly successful employing that method. It is therefore not unexpected that others would be persuaded to try it as well.

Logically, it would seem that copying the best is one way of giving yourself a chance of becoming the best. Amla is already a great player, one of the best in the game, but one can never be too good to get better.

Amla has not been the only one either. We saw, in the same game, Indian all-rounder Hardik Pandya having a go at it as well. And, it cannot be long before others start doing likewise.

Dick Fosbury introduced the Fosbury Flop to the world of high jumping in the late 1960s. It proved startlingly effective and soon every high jumper was doing it. His style was thought to be ungainly at first, but he won the event in the 1968 games in Mexico City setting a new Olympic record. By the time of the 1972 games in Munich, three quarters of all jumpers were doing the Fosbury Flop.

A.L. Shillinglaw totally deconstructed Bradman's technique and even wrote about it in a book, Bradman Revisited. He is flabbergasted that no one has really copied the great man's technique.

Bradman didn't conform to convention. His grip was all wrong. His bat rested between his feet in his stance, instead of behind his back-foot. His "pick-up" was towards point, rather than straight back, and he was frequently accused of playing across the line.

He made loads of runs in Australia as a young man. But, when time came for him to travel to England for the 1930 Ashes, many doubted he'd be as successful. His suspect technique just would not suit English conditions. They were wrong, of course, and Bradman totally brutalized the English bowling, scoring 974 runs in five Tests, his four centuries including a triple and two doubles.

He was, in short, a genius batsman who was unstoppable. His technique may not have adhered to the coaching manuals, but it worked quite well for him. His bat may not have always been straight, but runs flowed from it in torrents.

For the past few years, the runs have been flowing in torrents from Smith's bat as well. Like Bradman, he deviated from the coaching manuals and cultivated his own unique style. It has served him well too, supporting a run-scoring spree hardly seen since Bradman's reign.

On difficult batting surfaces, Amla's last three innings yielded 82, 61 and 52 runs respectively. There's no telling, of course, how he'd have fared had he not adopted this new technique but it appears to have served him well. Having said that, however, it has to be emphasized that the South African has been a very good player for a very long time. He probably still would have made runs regardless of the alterations he made.

But, what if a mediocre player decided to simulate Smith's technique after viewing the Australian's success? Would the change make him a better player? Perhaps. But, then again, perhaps not. Smith, like Bradman before him, profited from his unique way of playing because it suited his unique gifts. His technique works for him because it complements his natural talents.

Say it were possible for some cricket authority to decree that all batsmen copy Smith's technique as closely as possible. We'd be likely to find that many would struggle, and their level of production diminished. The Australian's way would simply not be amenable to their innate qualities. It would be like asking fast bowlers to adopt Jasprit Bumrah's approach and action because his ungainly technique enables him to bowl with deceptive pace and demanding accuracy. It is doubtful another bowler could even make it to club level bowling like that.

Would many other batsmen score more runs if they embraced Lara's alarmingly high backlift, or Chanderpaul's crazily amazing stance?

Players and coaches frequently worry too much about what is supposedly proper technique. Technique is only relevant to the extent that it enables the player to achieve his objectives. "The basic technique of a straight bat is sound for defence," wrote Bradman. "However, there should be all possible emphasis on attack, on the aggressive outlook, and if the technique is going to prove the master of a player and not the servant, then it will not be doing its job."

What worked for Bradman, and now for Bumrah and Smith, might not work for others. The dictum of "if they can do it, you can do it too," often spouted by motivational speakers and others is misleading. The idea that you will be successful by copying the behavior of successful people is untrue. We all have different gifts and will need to find different ways of making it.

Consider Smith's tendency to walk across his offstump. Bowlers, not unreasonably, often think they should bowl straight to him thinking his bat, presumably coming down at an angle and therefore slightly across the line, makes him a prime LBW candidate. But, then he hardly ever misses a ball on his legs. That way of playing all but prevents him nicking off, as they say, without increasing his vulnerability to getting out LBW. Another player, however, not blessed, perhaps, with his acuity of vision or his level of hand/eye coordination, would likely be a sitting duck.

What we should emulate are certain traits that lead to success, qualities like dedication to one's craft and a willingness to work purposefully hard at it. Copying someone else's style might work on occasion. More likely, however, is that players need to develop their own methods that matched their own particular array of gifts. That's what Bradman, Smith, Lara, Chanderpaul, and many of the great ones did.

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