phantom005

Batting techniques is tough to discuss in forums. In my visions when i had first got a test cap to play for india, i had practised a lot batting against tennis and rubber ball. And even had experience in batting in coaching clubs against heavy season ball. But in real odi and tests i was not able to play even spinners and medium pacers. So if the ball was like tennis ball, then why batsmen would have cared to worn the protection gear. And the heavy season ball properties are that after impact with bat/leg pad it stops under its own weight and never rebounds/travels far. Then i had to spent hours in nets against a automated tennis ball practising machine to correct my footwork. But i still got out in odi and tests. The light ball infact used to ricochet after pitching towards the stumps and even had an awkward bounce for fast bowlers. So the trick was to play the natural cricket strokes with alligning the bat with the ricocheted ball, feeling the vibrations in the bats' handle. The most successful batsmen like brian lara, sachin tendulkar and australian batsmen were whom who could jab the ball consistently on front foot. While many pakistani batsmen played backfoot with wristplay on suitable pitch conditions. Howzat?

diggcojj

I loved to play batting.A shot I really like,as long as you have enough width outside off-stump,I can hit the square cut quite hard, sometimes in the air as well as on the ground.Batting is one of the most exciting cricket part for cricket fans.A good batsman is one who can protect his wicket but at the same time score.

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david shamoon marbella

phantom005

The 2011 world cup has begun. Funny thing about international batting is batsmen never play error shots not even low profile batsmen play wrong shots. All strokes somehow are perfect! This match when virendra sehwag was playing against bangladesh medium pacers. A rash square cut virendra sehwag played and i saw it correctly that the ball after hitting the middle of the squared bat flew upwards and fell somewhere towards the 'third man'. But the camera presented a different picture as an another ball was thrown towards point by someone(to continue play and make the game seem errorless)and fielder was seen running till it reached the deep backward square boundary. So are the audiences being fooled? Is it quick telecast game editing?

phantom005

I always think that indian cricketeers names are something else! Like for eg. Javagal srinath's name might had been javagal samudragupta srinathaha. And then batting, whenever i want to learn/correct batting strokes, i look at england batting techniques. Like new zealand try to improvise fast bowlers, the other cricketing nations spend years in developing batting skills. The timeline is like from yesteryears stroke players to modern day unimaginable stroke wonders. Sometimes i think such batting improvising rather than making cricket better is infact ruining the game. Lets say graeme hick, mark waugh, sanath jayasurya, adam gilchrist, shahid afridi...When watching s.tendulkar or inzaman ul-haq i can imagine that they play big strokes by adjusting to the line of various bowling. But while looking at v.sehwag and other aussie batsmen it seems that they practise to swing the bat without looking at the bowling! Blind man's buff. Such batting is obscure and should be banned.

phantom005

I was practicing batting some days ago and i placed the bat at the stance away from my toes like pakistani batsmen do like salim malik, inzaman-ul-haq and abdur razzak. And its funny as apart from the straight bat defense, playing the cover drive blindly is fun! Like ijaz ahmed used to play.

phantom005

If i ask you to name the best batsmen in world cricket modern as well of the past, whom will you choose? Choosing fast bowlers is easy, but batsmen all over the world are too many with their own styles according to the countries they belong to. In my view as read by cricket history reputation the best stroke players are from england and west indies. And what should be the criteria of choosing the best batsmen, their records? Or their batting styles?, or their defence? Or their one-day batting adaptability? In my view some of the best that i liked in childhood mike gatting, graeme hick, graham thorpe, brian lara, carl hooper and an exception steve waugh!
Pakistan vs west indies matches are very boring, india vs west indies matches are very excitement especially when j.srinath used to bowl to sherwin campbell in floodlights while the crowd used to roar. Other cool matches are steve waugh playing kenny benjamin!

phantom005

List of Test cricket records - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Centuries
Most Test centuries
Centuries Player Matches
51 Sachin Tendulkar 181
40 Jacques Kallis 145
39 Ricky Ponting 152
35 Rahul Dravid 157
34 Sunil Gavaskar 125
34 Brian Lara 131

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/player/4188.html

What if batting in cricket is very easy, if you see the batting records of the best batsmen like brian lara, sir donald bradman, sachin tendulkar...they mostly started hitting their double centuries just in their 7th or 12th test match. And consistently hitting many centuries. Donald bradman played only 52 test matches! His height was just 5'7" and didn't showed any difficulty while batting. So i think is that most of the time the opposition team bowlers can be erratic and exploit the match conditions, but on most of the time the bowlers just play loose cricket. And many batsmen who are talented can easily score a lot of runs! In most of the test matches even fast bowlers are bowling very slow!
But for determining which is the world's best batsman perhaps the comparison should be done on 60 test performance basis and the average!
Considering only praising only one person sachin tendulkar for playing more than 181 tests and neglecting other batsmen around the world is termed foolishness!
In my views when i was batting in my school days, i used to try copying hard hitting many batsmen batting styles. I needed to adjust to the line length of tennis ball bowling, as the ball dips inswing awkwardly. So most of the shots are played blindly. But when i started playing club cricket with season ball i was bemused as every ball was used to pitch short of a good length and bounced slowing down just to my knees. And i could hit even the fast bowlers to the fence like a golf straight drive! So i had left all the hard hitting techniques of tennis batting!

phantom005

In the year 1993, in the sharjah stadium there used be a lot of crowd of arabia for getting seats to watch cricket matches. If asked a spectator- who is the player of pakistan that many of you are visiting to see like the most? An arabic man replied- 'i came to see the batting of rameez raja, his square glance and straight drives!'
Then he was asked- do you know sachin tendulkar?
The reply came as- no, we don't know about sachin tendulkar!
So there used to be an advertisement at that time during in between overs and it was about suitings and shirtings of Dinesh/Vimal! There were many cricketeers former captains who entertained to be in that advertisement! Like sunil gavaskar, vivian richards and so there was this guy called 'allan border'. There was no steve waugh at that time!
Allan border the left handed batsman was called the finest left handed batsman in cricket history who never gave away his wicket! But if you ask me that have i watched any of his matches?
No, hardly once perhaps only in a documentary. Neither my grandmother has watched allan border test matches!
Yeah but what about sir donald bradman, have you watched his matches?
And the reply came- whats the fuss, i have seen his matches, my great great grandfather had seen him play matches! Many people said the same things!

http://youtu.be/I0tnkUUHYAM

LOL

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/player/4174.html
What about mark taylor then?

I know about allan border, he scored 27 hundreds in 156 matches. 44 times not out in 265 innings. Whenever he used to bat at the least moment he used to defend the delivery from getting out! And used to push through gaps for taking singles golf shots btw! And from a distance it used to seem a reckless shot with bat raised high at the back and again towards the front for playing it square!

phantom005

Lets suppose the cricket ground are infact very short and the cricket pitch is long. So the person standing near the pitch looks very huge from camera focus. If the ground were big then the cricket players standing near the pitch would had looked very minute. So one hit of shahid afridi goes for a six blinder!

http://youtu.be/yFiOyyKnWvU

philipabraham

Thanks for sharing the information.