by Tim Wigmore
Specific bowler analysis would also enhance the batsman’s position. For Hodge this would be focused on the skills he knew he would be facing at the death. ‘What does his yorker look like? What’s his slower ball?’ said Hodge. ‘The slower ball was the most important of the two because I wanted to calculate what that looked like and what I could maximise off it.’
All these factors represented a vast amount of information for players to compute. The challenge was intensified by the pressure of the match itself and the noise and fervour in the stadium.
‘You have to learn to deal with chaos,’ said Jos Buttler, who performed a finishing role for England and in the IPL before moving up the order later in his career. ‘A lot of the time it is making sure you show that externally you are cool even if you’re not on the inside. That is really important. You need to trust in your ability and trust in your preparation that allows you then to let your subconscious take over in the middle. People talk about the zone. How do you access that and be consistent in that? Does that stand up to high-pressure situations?’
‘It is about managing your emotions through experience. I think trying to break situations down and know what’s required from this over, this next ball is the clearest place you can get to. It’s very cliché to say “one ball at a time” but it is important to bring it back to being that simple – managing what you need to do right now, rather than anything in the future.’
After calculating the equation, targeting the bowler, reading the field and anticipating their delivery – all in a matter of seconds, the batsman then had to actually face and play the ball. And for that they had even less time.
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For players such as Hodge – who relied on their game awareness more than belligerence – asking rates of around ten runs per over were eminently manageable. It was when rates began to climb beyond this point that they would start to flounder. ‘Whenever the asking rate was 10s – you’re comfortable because really in 12 balls you only have to find the boundary twice,’ said Hodge. ‘When it gets to 12 that increases so you have got to find the boundary probably three times in 12 balls. So the pressure mounts, scoreboard pressure, psychological pressure.’
Pollard, and his match-winning 54 against New South Wales, changed everything. ‘What he did by that particular performance is he gave belief and hope that any equation was possible,’ remembered Ganga. ‘Even if you look at that Champions League final that we played against the same opposition, we were in a similar situation and we still had belief that we could win that final despite our run rate going sky-high. Pollard, his style of play, his power as a player, always gave you that belief.’
The rise of Pollard signified a decisive shift in T20. Where previously asking rates of around ten were considered the ceiling, suddenly no asking rate seemed too steep. ‘The goalposts have shifted a little bit,’ said Hodge. ‘With the power hitters now – Pollard, Andre Russell, Carlos Brathwaite and all these huge West Indians, it’s hard to keep up with these superhumans.’
This not only altered the nature of the death over phase of the innings but allowed teams to recalibrate how they built their innings prior to the final few furious overs. ‘We played according to the resources we had in our team,’ explained Trinidad and Tobago captain Ganga. ‘We had Lendl Simmons, Adrian Barath and William Perkins at the top of the innings being flamboyant and flashy but managing risk. Then we played with myself and Denesh Ramdin being more consolidators in the middle overs to set things up for our power players: Darren Bravo and Pollard.’
While a player like Hodge was a pure batsman – he started his T20 career as an opener for Leicestershire – Pollard was the first player to move the foundation of the role irrevocably towards power hitting. Hodge was powerful but could not rely entirely on that side of his game. Instead, he was also forced to score in unusual areas, pick gaps and run hard. Pollard was the first of a generation of players whose batting was defined by six hitting – typically in an arc between midwicket and long off.
‘Power. That’s what distinguished Pollard from the rest,’ said Hodge. ‘His mishits still went over the fence which was unlike most people. He is of the opinion that no ground is big enough. I think he was the first who was ever seen. No one else had really tested that strength or power.’ By the end of the 2019 IPL Pollard had hit 607 sixes and 600 fours making him one of only two players – Russell was the other – to have hit more than 200 sixes and have hit more sixes than fours.
Pollard had technique and skill to match his brawn. Attacking batsmen would often be found swinging across the line of the ball, looking to hit the ball towards midwicket. While swinging in this direction was a natural motion it was one that compromised contact by closing the bat face on the ball. In contrast Pollard’s batting was marked by the straightness of his hitting.
At secondary school Pollard played a variation of indoor cricket designed to encourage better techniques: batsmen would get out if they hit the ball in the air on the leg side. Pollard developed a technique that saw him hit hard, flat and straight. ‘So front foot drives, straight drives, those things were always part of my forte because of the restrictions and it never left me. So that was something that I learned as a kid.’
Evidence of this technique endured; he brought a consistency to his hitting at professional level that was founded on this method. ‘Putting my big left foot down the track and hitting the ball straight back over the bowler’s head.’
‘If you look at him he will always be trying to hit the ball straight down the ground,’ said Ganga. ‘The times when he hits the ball to leg it is because it has made contact with the inside part of the bat. His intention was always to hit the ball down the ground. It’s very rare that you see him open up to hit through the off side. It’s very rare you see him cut the ball behind point. His power is go straight down the ground.’
Pollard’s technique was built for six hitting. ‘For me it’s about having a stable base,’ he said. ‘I just try and stand still and pick my areas. The strength comes naturally – with a little bit of gym work now. It’s just a matter of trying to time the ball. When I try to hit the ball too hard is when I miscue. It’s about having that stable base and backing my strengths to clear any boundary in the world.’
The game evolved in waves. In the early years after Pollard’s ascent he could rely overwhelmingly on his power. But as the game progressed and power hitters proliferated, bowlers and fielding captains learned how to counter these players with specific bowlers and tailored plans. For batsmen the challenge became psychological and strategic once more.
‘When I first came out it was more of a hitting gig,’ remembered Pollard. ‘You’d just go out and try and be aggressive. But over the years it has evolved into more of a thinking sort of game – with different match-ups and winning certain periods, the opposition keeping their best bowlers for you. It has evolved from just coming in and trying to be aggressive from ball one. You have to be smart about it.
‘I tend to play the situation. Whichever situation I walk into you watch the scoreboard – if you’re chasing a total according to what the run rate is and if you have time; if not you just have to target a particular bowler – you back yourself and have to play to your strengths. For me now it’s more playing the situation rather than just walking in and trying to be aggressive.’
Pollard’s greater scope for destructive batting meant he could be even more selective in whom he targeted. By the end of the 2019 IPL Pollard had played more T20 matches than anyone and this vast bank of experience enabled him to read the game adroitly. He honed this approach by utilising ‘scenario training’ in the nets – placing himself in predefined situations against specific bowlers and with specific field settings.
Klusener, one of the first great power hitters, recognised how the role had become more arduous as bowling evolved. ‘I think that was a little less complicated back in the 90s . . . I think nowadays with slower balls and slower ball bouncers and the skill of the bo
wlers I think finishing is a lot harder than it used to be in the past.’
The master of combining power and intelligence was the legendary Indian batsman M.S. Dhoni. Smaller than Pollard but bigger than Hodge, Dhoni was a strong man and wielded his huge, bottom-heavy bat with rapid hand speed. He developed a distinctive, and sometimes perplexing, approach to finishing off matches: Dhoni often seemed to delight in taking the game to the last over, and then sealing victory with a theatrical flourish. He was often highly selective in which bowlers he attacked, using the experience acquired in over 500 international matches for India.
Dhoni’s method bore similarities with Chris Gayle’s where he would start slowly before accelerating rapidly. Of course, the stage of the innings afforded Gayle longer to play himself in, making Dhoni’s approach even riskier. In the first ten balls of his innings Dhoni only scored at a strike rate of 114.88 but in ten-ball intervals that quickly rose to 143.11, then to 163.74, then to 197.83 and finally to 281.81. This crescendo method brought great success: in winning run chases Dhoni averaged 54 runs per dismissal.
Between 2008 and 2018 the death overs of T20 were transformed by power hitting. Pollard was at the vanguard of that change. In 2008 the average run rate in the last four overs of the innings was 8.77 runs per over, and a six was hit every 17 balls. By 2018 the average run rate in the last four overs of the innings had risen to 9.51 runs per over, and a six was hit every 13 balls. The type of players who thrived in the role changed from hybrid hitters such as Hodge to muscular, power-orientated players such as Pollard. Even in the 2019 IPL – with Pollard in his tenth year at Mumbai Indians – he continued to put in spectacular performances. In one match against Kings XI Punjab his 83 off 31 balls helped Mumbai chase 133 off their last ten overs.
Just as Pollard’s seminal innings against New South Wales initiated a sea change in the way the finishers batted, the performances of Andre Russell in the 2019 IPL initiated the next step in the evolution of T20’s most unforgiving batting role.
‘I remember having a conversation years ago with some friends at home,’ recalled Pollard in early 2019 after Russell’s astounding start to that year’s IPL. ‘And we were comparing Bravo, Russell and me and I told them that Russell – if he wants to realise his true potential – he can be better than both of us.’
Between 2015 and 2017 Russell matched the feats of his fellow West Indian, combining power hitting, versatile bowling and athletic fielding in a thrilling package. In 2016 Russell played for title-winning teams in the BBL, PSL, T20 Blast, CPL and BPL. Russell’s all-round role for five champion teams established his reputation as one of the most valuable players on the T20 circuit.
In January 2017 Russell’s career was dealt a setback when he was banned for 12 months for a whereabouts clause violation by an independent anti-doping panel in Kingston. The ban took Russell away from the game and what he loved for a year but it triggered a shift in his approach to the game.
‘When I look at Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James, I watch their progress. They work hard and that’s why they’re so successful,’ said Russell in an interview with ESPNcricinfo. ‘I changed my mentality since I got banned. [Before] I was slacking off. I was big. I was lazy. I wasn’t practising hard. Then when I got the ban, I came back stronger, leaner, more muscle.’
It wasn’t until the 2019 IPL that the effect of Russell’s training became clear. As destructive as Pollard was, the one thing he had struggled to do was maintain consistency. The aggressive nature of his role meant his form was prone to oscillating wildly. It was thought that it was essentially impossible to contribute reliably with such an attacking approach. That theory was scotched by Russell who in an outlandish IPL season scored 510 runs at a strike rate of 204.81 and average of 56.66: a sequence the likes of which cricket had never seen before. Russell unfurled scores of: 49 not out, 48, 62, 48 not out, 50 not out, 45, 10, 65, 15, 14, 80 not out, 24 and 0. Across these 13 innings he clubbed 52 sixes, the second most in an IPL season after Chris Gayle, who hit seven more from 206 more deliveries in 2013. Russell was the first batsman in IPL history to score 500 runs at a strike rate of more than 200. The previous record was held by Glenn Maxwell when he scored 552 runs in 2013 at a strike rate of 187.75.
‘He has worked on his game and he has taken it to a different level now,’ said Pollard. ‘To be consistent in that role takes a lot of practice, a lot of courage and a lot of hard work. Gone are the days where 15 runs an over is impossible.’
‘With my batting – it’s just a gift. I work hard at it as well,’ explained Russell to ESPNcricinfo, ‘because you might get a gift – like Steph Curry is good at shooting three-pointers, but if he takes a week away from the gym and doesn’t shoot any ball, he’s going to become rusty. That’s how I’m consistent. I make sure I keep batting, keep bowling, do something.’
Central to Russell’s success was opening up scoring zones through extra cover that previously had remained off limits for power hitters who had targeted midwicket round to long off. In the 2019 IPL season he hit an IPL record 14 sixes over mid-off and extra cover.
‘If you look at Pollard’s wagon wheels he doesn’t really hit it from anywhere from point through to third man and nothing behind square,’ remarked Hodge. ‘It’s easier to plan for as a fielding captain.’
By bringing extra cover into play Russell made the margin for error in terms of line even smaller for bowlers. Suddenly wide lines outside off stump no longer took balls out of the hitting arc and were instead balls that gave Russell room to free his arms and hit over the off side. ‘He has opened up a whole different area of the ground in terms of power hitting,’ said Pollard.
In the same IPL season India’s Hardik Pandya, a far smaller man than Russell, also pushed hitting technique forward. Standing deeper in his crease and more across to the off side, Hardik’s stance was set up to hit. He opened up his front side to create a base, rather than moving into the ball once it was bowled, compromising his stability and power.
Russell’s greater range made it nigh-on impossible to stop him once he got going. All that stood between Russell and destruction was either an inch-perfect yorker or pure bad luck.
In one league stage match Jasprit Bumrah – arguably the league’s best fast bowler – bowled a wide ball way outside off stump, millimetres inside the tramlines. It would have been a superb defensive delivery to almost every player in the world; but not to Russell. Just as Bumrah released the ball, Russell had made a small movement to the leg side, clearing his front leg to open up the leg side. But as soon as he spotted the wider line his initial movement towards the leg side allowed him to throw himself back into the line ball, transferring the weight off his front foot and into his back leg which was firmly planted deep in his crease.
It was then that Russell’s rapid hand speed and absurd strength kicked in. Russell threw his hands at the ball with such force that as he made contact with it his hands and bat whipped up towards and then round his head like a rapier. As the ball flew hard, flat and fast off the bat, Russell’s front leg flicked up off the ground. With the ball soaring towards the rope like an Exocet missile Russell hopped on his back leg to retain his balance. He was the world’s most destructive ballerina.
‘As in everything else,’ mused Pollard, ‘the world is changing, technology is changing, T20 cricket is changing, scoring a lot of runs at the back end of the innings is changing.’ This was the future of T20 hitting: Pollard’s power and intelligence, with added dynamism.
ELEVEN
CHEATING TO WIN; CHEATING TO LOSE
‘Some of these owners are dodgy as fuck’
International cricketer who appeared in multiple T20 World Cups
In January 2018, video footage of the Ajman All Stars League, a pop-up T20 league in the UAE mostly featuring semi-professional players, went viral. The reason was not belligerent six hitting, acrobatic fielding or pinpoint yorkers.
Instead, it was because of the Sharjah Warriors’ batting – if it co
uld be called that – against the Dubai Stars at the Ajman Oval. The Sharjah Warriors were bundled out for 46, thanks to a series of fantastical dismissals.
Players repeatedly ran down the wicket, scarcely feigning an interest in hitting the ball, and were stumped. Other players ran anaemically between the wickets and were run out. When a ball was misfielded, the batsmen stopped in response, and ran so slowly – decelerating as he got closer to completing a run – that the run-out could still be completed.
‘Absolute comedy going on,’ exclaimed the commentator on the live feed. He said later: ‘I’m really finding it hard to explain what I’m seeing . . .’
But there was a very simple explanation. It was all a fix, no more real than WWE wrestling.
The Ajman All Stars League was an unofficial T20 league which had not been sanctioned by the Emirates Cricket Board, the governing body in the UAE. Yet although the crowds were virtually non-existent for the matches, the games were still televised, including in India. And as they were televised, this meant that the matches could be bet on. The ICC believe that the games were completely corrupt; as the matches were not sanctioned, its Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) could not sanction the players involved, though it could bar them from getting involved in any official matches in the future.
The league ‘was set up purely for fixing,’ said one insider in the fight against corruption. ‘It was rigged from start to finish.’ The economics of the crime, he explained, appeared to be to make ‘500 rupees 20 million times’: that is, getting a huge number of small bets in India which would add up to making the fix worthwhile.
It was a window into cricket’s susceptibility to fixing in the T20 age. Any league, anywhere, could be a vehicle for corruptors. If you could bet on it somewhere in the world, then you could probably fix it.
