jlo33692 said:
Still sjs it seems amazing that all the great batsmaen are short doesnt it?
All the record holders ie Bradman,Border,Tendulkar,Lara,Gavaskar,are small and are exceptional batsman.Why??????You might think it a disadvantage as any ball short of a length must be like a bouncer to them? All the batsman who are short also appear to be able to play every shot in the book!!!!
It is true that most all time greats in batting have been of at least average height and often lower. Rarely have the absolute masters been the real tall men. One can try and understand that and see what are the pros and cons of height for a batsman.
PROS :
1. The one clear advantage that suggests itself is that of reach. Height means longer limbs which increases the reach as far as the feet moving to the ball is concerned as well as, to a slightly lesser degree of importance I feel, the arms. It would appear that a tall batsman will convert a good length delivery to a near half volley due to his greater reach. This is true but only to the extent that a half volley (or a good length for that matter) is not a fixed spot or even range on the pitch. It is determined primarily by the reach of the batsman. Thus a good bowler will aim for a point closer to the bowling end when determining a good length spot for his deliveries when bowling to, lets say Tony Grieg, as against Tendulkar.
. Having said that, it is still an advantage since stepping out and driving means that a couple of paces would take Greig almost two feet closer to the bowler than Tendulkar’s couple of paces.
. We will see when discussing the cons that this has its limitations.
2. The other distinct and, in my opinion, unmitigated advantage is of the greater swing of the bat. The power of a hit is a factor of the force and the length of the lever (in the case of an orthodox clean swing it would be the length from the right handed batsman’s left shoulder to the sweet spot on his bat. This could be something like six to eight inches more for Greig than for Tendulkar. Hence id both of them swung the bat with equal force and speed and struck it well on the sweet spot, the Greig hit should, normally carry more force and take the ball further. Hence the real big drivers off the front foot and six hitters have been bigger men although the improvement in batting implements has made the Tendulkars hit the ball a long way too. But the advantage is clearly with the taller men.
CONS : These are many as we will see.
1. First and foremost, a shorter stature means a lower centre of gravity hence the very tall players tend to be less ‘stable’/’steady’/’balanced’ than the average to low build ones. The game has traditionally, in the longer version at least, been about scoring with minimal risk which has meant hitting without playing too much in the air. A lower centre of gravity enables the batsman to keep the ball on the ground. This is exactly what the coach is trying to do when he asks you (when driving to covers for example) bend your left knee, keep your shoulder pointing downwards and generally ‘smell’ the ball. Basically it gives you greater control and also reduces the chances of the inadvertent hit in the air.
2. Just as the first pro of front foot, the shorter man benefits in the backfoot play. With a lower center of gravity you are also able to move quicker and more precisely while remaining well balanced. Great backfoot play is what separates the good batsmen for the truly great. This fact may be lost on the generation brought up in the limited over slugfest style and also because more people seem to understand what front foot batting is all about than do about backfoot batting (the straight batted backfoot batting in particular) but is true nevertheless. Count those universally accepted as the greatest batsmen in the history of the game (except the 19th century when backfoot play was still evolving) and you will find that they were not just exceptionally good of the backfoot, they played more off the backfoot than off the front. Look at Lara and you will find that he rarely goes on to the front foot to defend. My coach once told me that the difficulty about playing the good length delivery is that it takes you that split second longer to decide which foot to play the delivery off and that causes the majority of the problems. What he didn’t add but one has observed over the years that most batsmen have their preference of which movement (forward or back) they feel comfortable deciding in favour of when not sure of the length(the good length ball). Many batsmen tend to go forward and survive if the movement is negligible or manageable but the truly great batsmen go back and watch the ball off the wicket and improve their chances of survival. Lara is a prime example. The point in this context is that the taller batsmen, with honourable exceptions, tend to go forward and many of them grope against the big spinners of the cricket ball.
3. Its also a fallacy that height would give a batsman greater advantage in dealing with the short pitched delivery. This is not true for various reasons
a. The big issue in playing short pitched deliveries is being able to decide which to leave and the taller batsmen are at an obvious disadvantage here
b. Although the need to keep the ball down during hooking or pulling for example (rolling the wrists over) would appear to favour a greater height, in actual fact, the ball that does not rise as expected is as very often a bigger problem than the one that rises more than expected. Plus, if one finds the ball higher than what is possible to roll one’s wrists over, one can always leave it alone or play it intentionally in the air and away from the fielders which is possible if one is in control.
c. The biggest problem is not being able to move. Taller batsmen tend to be more leaden footed (though one day cricket has reduced the premium on footwork in stroke play) and not many of them go back on to the stumps to play back as comfortably as they go forward. This causes bigger problems facing short pitched deliveries than anything else.
Interestingly the horizontal bat backfoot strokes viz the cut, pull, hook etc are played better by average height batsmen while the tall batsmen who are able to move back with fluency (Sobers and Graeme Pollock come to mind though they were not giants) tend to play the backfoot drives of the straight bat very well !
4. The cricket bat as an implement (its size in particular) seems to be made with an average height person in mind. I once asked my coach what is the correct size of a cricket bat for a child and he said just slightly longer than half his height. This makes sense since you need to be comfortable in your stance. You need to be slightly bent over but not too crouched to be relaxed in your stance. A lot of very tall batsmen find the bat so short that a conventional stance is not very comfortable. Hence we had the crouchers in more orthodox times and now we have the batsmen who will stand bending only as mush as makes them comfortable but that leaves the bat in the air so they have modified with a bat-in-the-air stance. Clearly with the evolving height in homo sapiens, the heights of cricketers too is changing upwards and we will have more and more batsmen who will feel more comfortable standing with bat in the air than crouch. But clearly the conventional stance is ideal if one could adopt it. Shorter batsmen have no need to crouch. A bat seems to be made for people around 5’ 6” to 5’8” in height.
By the way, almost all the really great and very fast bowlers have been between 5’ 9” and 6 feet. Exceptions have been very few. The really tall guys 2 meters or so have invariably (again some exceptions) been medium fast to fast medium
More on that some other time .
PS : Sorry I have no time to correct typo’s and grammatical mistakes
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