THE POWER SHOT Ross Taylor and the Slog Sweep: How it all began Bharat Sundaresan Share Tweet

Slog sweep is a standout skill in Taylor's repertoire, one that's helped him dominate many attacks on many occasions ©Getty

Dermot Payton is as old-school as it comes. A farmer-turned-cricket-coach described as "hard and uncompromising" by most who've crossed his path. You experience it for first-hand, when you reach half-hour late for a meeting at his spectacular picture-book farm-house a few km outside the leafy town of Masterton.

Yes, we are in Ross Taylor country now, and his first-ever cricket coach is already on his tractor and motoring up the narrow, dusty track that leads out to the main road. And he isn't very chuffed about having been held up because, in his words, it's taken you over an hour to finish a sandwich.

He thankfully then does agree to give you an audience on the porch of what was originally his grandparents' home and has been in the family for well over a century. It doesn't take you long to figure out how not in favour the 75-year-old is the crash-bang-wallop nature of white-ball cricket these days. He even has a few choice words about the techniques of a couple of Black Caps batsmen who weren't really been at their best in the T20Is. To boot, he also reveals how that morning he'd been invited as a chief guest for a club game where the Wairarapa team were up against a visiting side. And how he'd refused to pass on words of encouragement to the opponents because, "why would I make them feel comfortable".

So even Payton fathoms the shock on your face, when he then reveals himself to have been the architect of the Ross Taylor slog sweep, that patented trademark of the highest run-getter in New Zealand Test history. Immediately upon claiming ownership of it though, he also admits to how it was outside his "code of ethics".

"The slog sweep is mine. It was outside my rule-book. That wasn't cricket in my head. But it was the best way to break the shackles," Payton reveals to Cricbuzz.

The shot, the former Central Districts coach recalls, had been conceived in the indoor nets at Masterton where Taylor and he would meet once a week. This is back when the future Test captain was still in his early teens and had already been tipped by Central Districts as a future star. Payton would spend hours feeding balls into a bowling machine and also praying that Taylor doesn't hit too many balls back in his direction.

Dermot Payton is the architect of the famous Ross Taylor slog sweep. ©Cricbuzz

"Back then we had no safety nets or helmets. And I'm thinking Jesus if he hits it straight, that too with the power he generates, bloody he'll kill me. I wasn't actually quick enough to get out of the way. He was only 13 but hit it so hard. I soon made sure that he was playing a cover drive or an on-drive and no shot that came my way," says Payton.

But he's quick to insist that his own life preservation had nothing to do with encouraging Taylor to once in a while pick up a full delivery outside off-stump and bludgeon it over mid-wicket for six. It instead had to do a lot with how bowlers back then were targeting the free-flowing right-hander. There were only two major boxes that Payton asked Taylor to tick while pulling off this ingenious stroke: pick a ball that wouldn't hit your stumps in case you missed it, and also always hit it for six with no half measures. And as we've seen over the years, and especially at Seddon Park on Wednesday (February 5), Taylor rarely gets it wrong when he chooses the right ball to bring out his slog sweep to.

"My thought process back then was every now and then the bowler is going to give you a half-volley outside the off-stump and they have all the fielders there, and you put it over mid-wicket for six. I gave him that incentive. If the opposition is pinning you down and pinning you down and you can't get the game going, then two slog sweeps, one an over, that's six and six -- that'll probably be enough to break the shackles. Then they'll have to change the field and put a man out there and you've opened a hole somewhere else," says Payton.

It's exactly how Taylor manipulated the Indians in Hamilton. Whether it was with the slog sweep to the spinners or the meaty mows over mid-wicket off Jasprit Bumrah and Shardul Thakur, he played with the field that Virat Kohli was setting for him and getting them to move around on his terms. It's a standout skill in Taylor's repertoire, one that has helped him dominate many attacks on many occasions over his lengthy career, and especially in recent times where his ODI average has burgeoned to 48.48.

Outtake from the Palmerston North Boy's High School yearbook on Taylor's hockey exploits ©Cricbuzz

But as natural a talent as Taylor has always been, it took him a while to completely master the shot, feels Payton. And he points out to the tied T20I in Hamilton to say how there are still times when he doesn't get it fully right. There, the right-hander made the mistake of picking a ball from Mohammed Shami that was headed to his stumps to play across the line and got bowled. The coach though reminisces about the time he coached a team to deny his former pupil a chance to play his favourite shot. It was when Whanganui Collegiate School, who Payton was in-charge of for years, hosted Palmerston North Boys' High with Taylor as their star batsman.

"I got the bowlers to make sure they bowled a very tight line and moved the fielders in probably 5-6 meters from their normal fielding positions. I knew he was a 'drop the ball and go' batsman. But the fielders were too close and he didn't feel comfortable... Not given any room, he couldn't cut or pull it and he was early in the game and he was their best player. Our guys strangled him, and then once we ran him out. We engineered to get him out," Payton says with some pride.

He also remembers a time when Taylor played for Wairarapa against Manawatu in a local game where after racing away to 55 in no time against the fast bowlers, the youngster fell to a slog sweep off the first ball that the spinner bowled to him.

"I was very terse with him that day. I told him you made them look like geniuses by playing a dumb shot. I could see that it really impacted him. And even now you'll see he gives himself a few sighters against a spinner before going after him," he adds.

Taylor, his former coach recalls, always had natural timing and even better hand-eye coordination that allowed him to always strike the ball at "100 miles an hour". This was a talent though that he was notorious for more so on the hockey field. According to Payton, the youngster was good enough in fact to have played for the New Zealand hockey team, or the Black Sticks, at the highest level. There are also those, Taylor included, who believe that the slog sweep perhaps could also been attributed to his handling of the hockey stick.

Not only hockey, Taylor's winter sport back during his school days, he was good enough to score 33 goals in his second year and also gained a reputation of being a poacher whose ferocious strikes opponents came in the way of at their own peril.

Ross Taylor at the back posing with the school hockey team. ©Cricbuzz

To the extent that some at Palmerston North Boys' High reveal they actually had to get sturdier protective gear for the goalkeepers so that they felt safe while having to deal with a hockey ball struck by Taylor. The gifted teenager also had a reputation of not being the swiftest mover on the field and someone who waited for the ball to come to him. But he was cerebral enough a finisher, so much so that every teammate would be keen to get the ball to 'Rosco' with the belief that it invariably meant a goal for the team. No surprises then that "very good at penalty corners" is one of the descriptions of Taylor's hockey performances in the school's yearbook for his second year there.

Ross Taylor and the slog sweep have had quite a chequered relationship over the years, and there was a period where he put the shot away or used it only occasionally. It was also around the time he started working a lot with his mentor and late friend Martin Crowe.

The abstinence from it though has eased in recent years, and if anything, Taylor seems to have gone back to what Payton had asked of him all those years ago -- to be selective and keep the bowlers guessing by executing the shot only twice during an innings. A subconscious ode perhaps to the man who insists on having introduced the shot into his life, even if Payton did do so grudgingly and knowing fully well that it was "just not cricket" in his book.

© Cricbuzz