Martin Crowe preferred to tap the bat near his right foot as the initial trigger before making a small move back and across. He felt this sparked a reaction to the delivery of the ball and then, with the bat remaining low to the ground, his shape held firm and level through the execution of the shot. Martin paid close attention to technique but worried about its boundaries and inhibition. He was at his best, he said, without ‘traffic’—either emotional or technical. He wanted his movements and bat-swing to be in sync with the arrival of the ball. When they were, he had rhythm . . . and rhythm is the holy grail.
Jacques Kallis and A.B. de Villiers pre-set themselves with the bat held slightly aloft but not high. These things trend and change as the game moves through its ages. Right now, many of the best players hold the bat up and a number of them pre-set in the way of Kallis/de Villiers—Kane Williamson among them. Increasingly, and particularly in T20 cricket, batsmen are setting themselves like baseballers, ready to strike. The left hip is cleared and from this comes a free swing and a near 360-degree field of opportunity. This technique is unlikely to sustain defence against the moving ball and, like it or not, Test cricket will always provide passages of play in which the batsman must protect his wicket. Thus the question, how many batsmen can be as successful as David Warner in making the transition from the shortest form to the longest form of the game? And, on a slightly different issue going forward, how many will want to?
Dexter points out that young English cricketers were brought up to think defence before attack, which may have been a legacy of uncovered pitches and, if not, then of senior county pros who saw the glass half empty. That was not the case in other parts of the world and is not the case today. Dexter points out that if you are ready to attack, you will be in the best position to defend. He does not advocate the baseball approach but he does support a full and open backlift. Boycott would argue that you have to stay in to score runs. He believes in big strides, especially forward, because the soft and grassy pitches on which he was raised demanded that you be as near to the pitch of the ball as possible. Batsmen schooled on hard pitches tend to transfer their weight with smaller strides and, thus, create a wider hitting arc.
Dexter thinks Boycott’s 142 not out in the second innings at Sydney in 1970–71 was the best innings on a difficult pitch that he has seen. John Snow then took 7 for 40 to see England home. Boycott feels that his upbringing on uncovered pitches served him well in that innings. He rode the uncertain bounce against the quick bowlers, restricting himself to the cut and to straight and on drives. He finally worked out John Gleeson, mainly defending, but also using his feet to get to the pitch of the ball on enough occasions to change Gleeson’s length. He says that, in general, he tried to maintain a flow in his batting, even in defence.
It is important for the body to remain fluent, not static, through all the strokes since each one is the extension of another. A straight drive is best played by hands and shoulders that are working with the forward momentum of the body. Sobers could drive the fastest bowlers off the back foot past the stumps at the non-striker’s end in one fluid motion and, for good measure, with the most magnificent flourish. Tendulkar played the same shot but with more of a forearm punch. Were they boxers, Sobers would be looking to finish the fight with this stroke, Tendulkar to do so with accurate jab after jab.
Given the bowler is generally aiming to hit the top of off stump, either of the triggers—back and across, forward press—must be the first part of the move to cover that line or, at the very least, to understand it. There are batsmen who choose to stay leg-side of the ball but this is fraught with danger, as the hands are bound to be separated from the body in the danger area just outside off stump.
Essentially, a batsman is trying to make the bowler bowl at him. In return, bowlers are looking to move a batsman away from his secure space and out of his mental comfort zone. These vignettes, or sidebars, to cricket make the game appealing on many different levels.
Ideally the ball should be played late, beneath the eyes, but swing bowlers look to draw the batsman into playing early, which is fatal; seam bowlers look to close down footwork by working a batsman away from his chosen position; fast bowlers can traumatise the mind. Spin bowlers work on patience, and hope to use flight and cunning to outwit and outlast their opponent.
Most of the basic principles of technique apply to batting against all types of bowling. Having said that, it is imperative to use the feet to get to the pitch of spin. Michael Clarke has been superb at this, as were the two Sri Lankans Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara. Before them, any number of Indians and, foremost of all, Javed Miandad, were masters of the art. A couple of small skips, back foot crossing front foot along the way, make for the smoothest move at the ball. It should not be forgotten that the use of the feet is as valuable in defence as it is in attack.
The softest hands are imperative, as the spin and extra bounce of the ball must be cushioned. Woe betide he who goes hard at spin bowling. In essence, batsmen should not let spinners settle. Look first to read the spin, either from the hand or off the pitch, and then find a way to work with it. It is no surprise that Shane Warne says leg spinners need a lot of love. The fact is, batsmen love to smack spinners out of the park. The trick is for them to do so with a clear plan. Warne would goad batsmen into departing from their plan—into playing the man not the ball—but he needed his captain to understand the thinking.
In England’s second innings at the Gabba in 1994–95, I remember walking around the Gabba with Barry Richards and Greg Chappell as Warne bowled around the wicket and into the well-worn footmarks outside the right-hander’s leg stump against a bemused England. Graeme Hick, who had managed well in the second innings, was out shouldering arms to a ball that spat from the rough and ran up his arm to his glove before ricocheting to Ian Healy. Richards said the only hope was to take guard outside leg stump—in other words, to set up on the line of the ball’s release, and open up the off side. Chappell said he would prefer to stay off side and either come down the pitch to drive straight or through mid-on or to slog-sweep. Both added they would have to force him to drop short by taking some risks themselves, otherwise scoring opportunities were too limited. We suspected that no spin bowler had previously asked such complex questions of batsmen. Muttiah Muralitharan and his various challenges were to come a little later.
A CONVERSATION WITH SIR DONALD BRADMAN
Bradman rated the Sobers tour de force for the World XI at Melbourne the best he ever saw, marginally ahead of Stan McCabe’s epic 232 at Trent Bridge in 1938—an innings he said he wished he could have played himself. I know this because he told me. During the Adelaide Test, on the same England tour of 1994–95, Doug Insole fixed it for me to meet Bradman. We sat in the back left-hand corner of the committee’s outdoor seating area for about 40 minutes. Bradman and Nicholas, chewing the fat. Dad would never have believed it.
We began talking about Shane Warne, who was bowling at that moment. He said Warne was the best young spinner he had seen. He was impressed by his accuracy and competitive spirit and likened these attributes to Bill O’Reilly, who was the best bowler he had seen—full stop. Best of all, he liked the way Warne entertained us all: an attribute, he said, not to be underestimated. He admired much about modern cricket and wished he had played the one-day game. It would have suited him, he thought, and he liked the idea of playing under lights.
I asked him if there was a secret to batting. Concentration was first on his list, after which the words I recall are courage, character, footwork and speed of movement—both around the crease and with his strong hands. He said he spent hours chopping wood as a child, which had strengthened his wrists to allow the slightly unorthodox grip that gave him such surprising power.
He said his aim was to score runs quickly—a reason, claims Roland Perry, the author of the book Bradman’s Best, he selected Barry Richards in his all-time team ahead of Sir Leonard Hutton and Sunil Gavaskar. The object was to win the game, sai
d Bradman, so you better crack on with it. He alluded to the fact that he didn’t have especially good eyesight, which amazed me, but he moved quickly on to talk about Tendulkar and, annoyingly, I forgot to come back to it. He said that much of Tendulkar’s play was similar to his own—he suspected that an average eyesight was included in this—and pointed out that he (Bradman) didn’t have to keep a billion people happy every day of his life. He said that Sachin was a superb cricketer, whose modest example was an inspiration at a time when the world was losing much of its modesty.
I picked him up on Barry Richards and brought Graeme Pollock into the conversation. He was convinced that had the two of them been allowed a full Test-match career, they would have been the greatest right- and left-handed batsmen of all time. He admired Pollock for his error-free commitment to an innings, without in any way compromising a natural leaning towards attacking the bowlers. He particularly loved the imagination in Richards’ game and the desire to dominate.
Perry quotes Neville Cardus, who knew Bradman well, describing one of Bradman’s innings: ‘He was never uninteresting, he merely abstained from vanity or rhetoric.’ That might have been the pattern of our conversation, though he didn’t completely shy away from talking about himself. He was adamant that all batsmen should be looking to score, even if defending, and felt that his ability to keep the scoreboard ticking was paramount to his success.
I pressed him on other matters. He was less keen to discuss Bodyline—bored by it, probably—but he did say that the real problem was scoring runs against the tactic, as was the case in the 1980s against the West Indies. He was impressed by the way Tony Greig and Allan Knott had tried to score against Lillee and Thomson by making room to upper-cut. He wouldn’t be drawn on whether Thommo was the fastest ever, though he did bring Larwood, Tyson and Holding into the conversation.
He preferred an eye for the future and predicted an increasingly commercial game and huge income for the best cricketers. This, he thought, might bring issues with player behaviour that the ICC would have to confront more quickly and firmly than administrators of recent years (pre-1994–95) had done. Having said that, he was generous in his praise of the modern cricketer. He even spoke well of Kerry Packer, realising I’m sure that Packer had been good for the professional game. Bradman was an amateur, of course, a stockbroker by profession. He was glad of the feeling that, whatever else, he had something other than cricket to fall back on. It seemed an odd thing for a man whose whole life had been dedicated to the game to say. Perhaps the overriding emotional difference between amateur and professional is that one needs it so much more than the other.
When Insole reappeared it was clear our conversation was over. I thanked Sir Donald and left, having barely scratched the surface. As I walked back to the press box, I wondered if he might be the greatest sportsman of all time. Figures support the idea. Effectively, he was twice as valuable as any other batsman ever. On reflection, Muhammad Ali; Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods; Rod Laver and Roger Federer; and Pelé and Lionel Messi, to name a few, each have impressive credentials of a different type.
I heard a mischievous story about Bradman from Henry Blofeld. He had twice been dismissed for low scores against New South Wales, which had adopted a tactic of putting on a bad off spinner to bowl well wide of off stump. Twice, the frustrated Bradman threw his bat at the ball and got out. In 1937, Queensland went to Adelaide and his old mate Bill Brown used the same approach. Bradman studied the bowler a while and then called Brown over. ‘Here, Bill,’ he squeaked, ‘I was going to get a quick hundred today and then give it away, but now I’m going to get 250.’ He fell four short.
It is well worth making a visit to the Bradman Museum in Bowral, New South Wales. Many of today’s cricketers are cynical about those of yesteryear, particularly when they watch the old newsreels. But go to Bowral, see him on the big screens and you will marvel at this genius of run-making. Such power and precision. Such authority. He would smash anyone today, too.
Thommo on The Don
In late January 2016, Jeff Thomson was inducted into the Australian Hall of Fame. He made a very funny speech, reminding us all of a more relaxed and less politically correct age. The next day, Kerry O’Keeffe interviewed him on radio. Here is a transcript of the last part of their conversation.
Kerry O’Keeffe: Mate, there’s not many of us from our era that can claim to have bowled to Don Bradman. But you can, can’t you?
Jeff Thomson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
KO: When did that happen?
JT: On a rest day in a Test match in ’77. We were playing India.
KO: Can you talk us through that experience, the Bradman experience?
JT: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Well, I was—a rest day. Just got married. You know, so instead of the usual rest day where I wrecked myself, you know, getting drunk or going fishing, what we used to do—I mean on a rest day, you just cut loose. Only two days to go. We can do that easy.
KO: Yeah.
JT: So, anyway, I’ve got my wife with me now, so all the fun’s gone out the window. I’ve got to toe the line, so I’ve gone to a lunch party. Can you believe, Jeff Thomson from Bankstown going to lunch at a doctor’s place drinking wine? And it was hot as buggery. It was about 40-odd degrees. Anyway, I’m there. And who’s there? On the table is Bradman and his wife, my wife and myself, Doc Beard, who was the host, and his wife, his two boys, who were seventeen and nineteen, and Bishan Bedi and a couple of Indian officials on the other side. Right, we’re playing against them.
KO: Mm.
JT: And I’m sitting there drinking. I remembered distinctly drinking a XXXX there. That’s what I used to have. And it was hot. And Bradman had a full suit on—the whole deal—tie and all that. And I just had casual, neat casual. And the next minute we’re going out in the backyard at Doc’s place. And I reckon he’s asked us along there because his kids want to play cricket against Don Bradman and Jeff Thomson in the backyard. And this is fair dinkum. I hadn’t seen them before this, except down on the ground. And Doc was a tragic cricketer. He would have loved to have played cricket, but he wasn’t good enough, as you know. So he was hoping his boys were going to be good enough. So he figured he would give them a lesson with Bradman and myself. As we were walking out to the net, and it was a full turf wicket, Bradman said to me, he said, ‘Gee, Jeff,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing this for. I haven’t done this for 30 years.’ In 1948 he finished. This is in 1978, right.
KO: Mm.
JT: So it was ’78. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t need to do this either. I’m bowling tomorrow. I don’t need to waste my energy on this. I’d rather enjoy my beer. But it’s Don Bradman, and when Ian Chappell and Greg Chappell find out I’ve been mates with Don Bradman, they’re going to be spewing. And when people find out I’ve bowled to Don Bradman, how cool is that?’
KO: Mm, yeah.
JT: You know? So I had a double-edged—double-blade sword, if you know what I mean?
KO: Yes, indeed.
JT: Anyway. We go out there. I thought, ‘Wow, I’d better bowl some leg spinners to this old bloke. It’s not going to look too good if I kill him in backyard cricket, you know, in Adelaide.’ This is what an idiot I am. Anyway, so I bowl a couple of leggies. And I used to be able to bowl good leggies. And I’m sort of lobbing them, and Bradman’s got nothing but a bat, right. He’s taken his coat off. Still got his tie on and his full, you know, dress gear. And he’s just batting them back. And I looked for where these kids are, and they’re off their long run, right. I thought, ‘Oh, no, they’re going to kill him.’ And before I could stop them, this kid’s running in. And the kids are bigger than me, right. They’re seventeen and nineteen, but they’re tall. And I thought, ‘Oh, mate.’ I’m looking at Bradman, and he’s going from sort of trying to smile at me—because you know what he’s like; he didn’t smile that much.
KO: No.
JT: And he’s got this serious face on. And I thought, ‘Good luck, old man. You’re goi
ng to be hurting in a minute.’ And he goes smack and hits this kid—like, hits the ball. Like the best shot you ever want to see. Like the ones you see on TV, you know. And I just thought, you know, when you watch those old film clips, it’s like when people watch us, you know. They probably say, ‘They cut out all his bad balls and all this sort of thing. You’d never think Bradman played a bad shot.’ Anyway, he belts this kid. And I thought, ‘Well, that was lucky.’ The next kid comes in and he belts him somewhere else. And I thought to myself, ‘Oh, beginner’s luck.’ So I stopped playing, and for 20 minutes he has absolutely destroyed these two. Like, if it was Viv Richards or Greg Chappell or Ian Chappell out there at the same day, you know, in their prime, they wouldn’t have done it. They would have backed off and said, ‘Look, I’ve got no pads, protectors,’ and all that and got out. He just launched at these kids. Like, he just said to himself—I could see him saying he is not going to miss a ball. And he didn’t. He just destroyed them. And he walked out and just sort of winked at me with a bat under his arm as if to say, ‘They thought they were getting me out. I’ve got news for them.’ Oh, mate, you know, Skull, it was up there as one of the highlights of my career.
AN INNINGS (OR TWO) BY VIV RICHARDS
Viv Richards played the greatest innings I ever saw at first hand. He was with Glamorgan for a couple of years at the end of his career and occasionally wound back the clock to the days when he carried all before him. We set them 364 on the final day, a target well within reach on the flat pitch at the small Northlands Road ground. They were about 140 for 5 at tea but Viv was still there and, for some reason, he was blocking. He seemed to be in a filthy mood, exaggerated by the fact that the Glamorgan captain, Alan Butcher, had come out on the dressing-room balcony waving his arms around as if to say get the hell on with it. It was like Viv had decided the others were pretty useless and, in protest, was going to block out the draw. We definitely thought we would win. No way could the last five Glamorgan wickets survive a whole session.
A Beautiful Game Page 15
