honestbharani said:
In other words, there is no real variation in their batting order, is there? Apart from Inzy and to an extent, Younis Khan, no one else really looks comfortable off the backfoot from what I have seen. Would it be such a bad idea to use Asim Kamal as an opener?
Well backfoot play is very important for opening and more so to negotiate (and leave) the moving ball - in test matches particularly. But some players, with experience, learn to cope even being predominantly front foot players. But put a front foot player PLUS let him be inexperienced and you have problems.
Coming to Asim Kamal. I am surprised at his continuous absence from the team. I have heard things like he doesnt convert starts (read 50's) to big scores. Thats a funny arguemnt when you find that people are failing to get starts too.
I think Younis Khan can open.
I know he may not want to but it is the old story in the sub continent. Most top players dont want to open. This is not surprising considering that, while it is easy to open and score heavily in sub continental flat tracks (by and large) they really worry about being exposed when touring abroad. Thus we have "bali-ka-bakras" (sacrificial lambs) that have always been pushed to open because the seniors wont take the responsibilty. It happened to Ramesh Saxena (one of the most exciting batsmen from India in the sixties but forgotten after his one test as opener in England in 1966 to VVS Laxman who is the exception who faught back to the middle order on the basis of many chances.
But the problem will not go away until we have wickets where batsmen wont survive until they perfect their backfoot technique. Over the last one hundred years or more since the backfoot game and the front foot game were combined in the same player by WG, what has diffrentiated the good player from the great has been the quality of the backfoot play.
The one day format and its batting tracks with the penalty of being ruled wide if you move the ball too much and snicks going for boundaries since slips are guarding other areas have only made backffot play reduced to slashing and slapping the cover off the ball between third man and cover point. The straight batted or even horizonatl bat but grounded shots, let alone defensive strokes off just short of a good length deliveries are required so infrequently that batsmen can actually decide not to bother to learn them.
From what one has seen from going round the junior nets around the country, one would say that the new crop of coaches dont seem to bother too much about it too. India is slightly better here but its getting worse.
I dont know about Pakistan and how much and where the young stars get there coaching from and at what time of their early cricket but it is clear that their coaches dont seem to put too much premium on back foot play. This is sad because the fact of the matter is that backfoot play once mastered can actually make for very fast scoring in one dayers too WITHOUT THE RISKS that the slashes of NEITHER foot that modern day batsmen seem to prefer. It is the need by captains to
spread the field around in the inner circle (add to that the continuously shortening boundaries) that are not punishing the airy fairy shots that the modern fan and even new reporters rave about.
The bowlers too are trying to make sure their ten overs go for fewest possible runs thus the emphasis is on
cramping the batsman and
not-giving-him-room rather than exploiting what is actually a defect that has crept into batting techniques. Thus the moving away delivery is almost disappearing from the cricket scene. The high number of one day games is ensuring that bowlers do not
unlearn what they pick up in the shorter version and finally it creeps into the nets and finally even coaches go along.
This is the vicious circle through which batting is evolving. The English cricketer is better off in this one respect that the ball moves in England so playing in the county circuit does make it imperative to know how to handle it but unfortunately they have a much smaller pool of talent and, I daresay, the talent is not of the same caliber as one sees in the subcontinent.
I have always maintained that a subcontinental cricketer with EARLY experience of playing in the English county season should be a more complete cricketer than if he learnt all his early cricket at home. Unfortunately the number of first class games in the county game have reduced with increased number of one dayers (which are still better than one dayers at home), the quality of the game has declined and not many Indian and Pakistani batsmen are getting EARLY grounding in England.
