Batting Stance

[someblokecalleddave]

Hello, it seems that two winters of netting on and off seems to be paying off a little and I'm scoring a handful of runs now and then, but also helping the other better batsman by rotating the strike and not getting out - had some nice last wickets stands in the last two years!

Last time I batted my captain was umpiring and he noticed that I bring the bat down from my back-lift slightly diagonally "Across the line". This means I hit the ball on the on-side most of the time between the bowler and the mid-on position. He was saying that it was risky because if I get the timing wrong playing across the line I'm likely to make a mistake and should look to play straighter. But trying it, it seems that the most effective way for me is to adjust my stance, so that I'm side on - which means my back foot is brought further back towards the leg-stump, so the back-lift is angled out towards 3rd man - but then the bat comes down much straighter and plays through the line. This at the moment is theory, just used in practice with throw-downs. What I need to know is the approach viable and should I pursue it, or is it a lost cause? Any other ideas would be appreciated.

 

[SLA]

What were your feet doing before?

Most batsmen lift their bats up towards 2nd slip, this is not a problem. The key is to keep your hands in nice and tight to your body, then if you do decide to play a vertical bat shot, as you move into position you dip your front shoulder at the ball, which should neatly bring the bat back towards the keeper just as you're starting to bring it down.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

What were your feet doing before?

Most batsmen lift their bats up towards 2nd slip, this is not a problem. The key is to keep your hands in nice and tight to your body, then if you do decide to play a vertical bat shot, as you move into position you dip your front shoulder at the ball, which should neatly bring the bat back towards the keeper just as you're starting to bring it down.

I'd stand pretty side-on with my feet parallel to each other. Last night though I had a knock about with my son Joe and he watched what I was doing. He suggested that I brought the bat round in the back-lift so that it was angled more towards fine leg, that worked, all the balls were then straight or through the off-side. I'll try that out in the coming practice sessions and games with a parallel feet set up.

 

[SLA]

Most (professional) batsmen start out in a side-on position, and then rotate to more of a front on position as they hit the ball.

 

[Neville Young]

Dave, don’t change your stance. By changing the position of your feet to what you have described you close off your stance and make it more difficult for you to hit balls on the middle and leg stump. This is because you then have to get the bat “around” your front leg to hit the ball. You will also find it harder to hit balls on the leg side.

The simplest solution is to change the way you lift the bat.
Instead of lifting the bat with your bottom hand (where your bottom hand will move back towards the stumps).

In your normal stance lift the bat, straight up towards your chin (in this case both elbows do the lifting). If you can imagine how your arms and elbows move when operating a hand pump to pump up a car tyre, while looking at where a bowler will be coming from, you will have the action right. If you use your elbows to do the lifting and not your wrists you will always have a straight back lift.

Experiment and see how you go.

 

[SLA]

Dave, don’t change your stance. By changing the position of your feet to what you have described you close off your stance and make it more difficult for you to hit balls on the middle and leg stump. This is because you then have to get the bat “around” your front leg to hit the ball. You will also find it harder to hit balls on the leg side.

The simplest solution is to change the way you lift the bat.
Instead of lifting the bat with your bottom hand (where your bottom hand will move back towards the stumps).

In your normal stance lift the bat, straight up towards your chin (in this case both elbows do the lifting). If you can imagine how your arms and elbows move when operating a hand pump to pump up a car tyre, while looking at where a bowler will be coming from, you will have the action right. If you use your elbows to do the lifting and not your wrists you will always have a straight back lift.

Experiment and see how you go.

Didn't Chris Rogers lift up his bat like that?

 

[Neville Young]

You could be right SLA. Graham Gooch was someone who did and when I think about it both he and Rogers had basically the same sort of stance when waiting for the ball to be delivered.

 

[someblokecalleddave]

You could be right SLA. Graham Gooch was someone who did and when I think about it both he and Rogers had basically the same sort of stance when waiting for the ball to be delivered.

The change of bat position in the back-lift seems to be working. I batted at No.07 last Saturday after a middle-order collapse. Both the bowlers were slow/medium but accurate and varying speed, length - you miss they hit and the 3 previous batsmen all went cheaply. Amongst the 1st couple of balls, I played at one doing what I normally do and realised that the reason I missed it was that I'd played across the line. I made the correction in the back-lift, angling the bat towards fine-leg and hit every ball that was on the stumps there-after (albeit primarily defensively). That allowed the bloke at the other end to take a riskier approach and score most of the runs to get us into a position to win, but right at the end having been hitting the ball defensively I decided I'd hit the winning runs and did so with a 2 and a 4! Looks promising, hopefully I might get a chance this weekend to see if it was a fluke or not!

 

[Neville Young]

Well Dave are you the next Gooch?