All posts tagged: Batting technique

Will Sooryavanshi’s high-backlift game survive England? YouTube may have the answer

Will Sooryavanshi’s high-backlift game survive England? YouTube may have the answer

Published by Webster

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is 15, on his first tour with the Indian senior team, and everyone is asking the same question: will the high backlift survive tall pacers in English conditions? Before you worry, there’s a YouTube playlist worth putting together. Not of his sixes. Of something less discussed. Starting with a video story of village-cricket in rural Bihar. It’s from a time when the world hadn’t heard of Sooryavanshi. He’s barely 13, looks much younger. He is playing a game at Barauni refinery ground, a 50 km bumpy road ride from his home in Samastipur. It’s the final of the Shyamlal Sinha junior tournament – as the colourful banner says – where he has hit 218 from 121 balls in his team’s total of 289 in 40 overs. The report starts with the anchor, in that delightfully Chand Nawab tone, showering unadulterated praise on the “chhota bacha” who he is blown away by. He repeats words like “Karaamat pe karaamat kar rahe ho”,  “century pe century diye ja rahe ho”, “taabad-tod batting kar rahe ho”. …

The grip problem that is unravelling his white-ball game

The grip problem that is unravelling his white-ball game

Published by Webster

Two months ago, Rishabh Pant was sweating it out in Chennai’s pre-season IPL heat. There was reason to be concerned. His stocks in India’s white-ball setup were at an all-time low — he was nowhere near the T20 World Cup-winning squad, and his last ODI appearance was in August 2024. No longer India’s first-choice wicket-keeper in white-ball cricket, Pant arrived looking lighter, sharper. Interacting with Yuvraj Singh in Mumbai before the season, he stressed the finer points — bat swing, shape retention, clarity of shots. The intent was to force his way back in. Two months on, in Chennai on Sunday, Pant was frozen by a Jamie Overton delivery that rushed him in the crease. The Lucknow Super Giants skipper was bowled for 15, dropping the momentum built by Josh Inglis’s 33-ball 87. A cluster of wickets followed. LSG settled at 203 and fell short. After eight defeats, Pant has also run out of excuses to explain his team’s rut. The Overton dismissal exposed a weakness now extending to his defensive game — long considered …

How less flamboyant Sai Sudharsan managed to score his 3rd IPL century against Royal Challengers Bengaluru in IPL 2026

How less flamboyant Sai Sudharsan managed to score his 3rd IPL century against Royal Challengers Bengaluru in IPL 2026

Published by Webster

3 min readUpdated: Apr 24, 2026 08:55 PM IST Gujarat Titans opener Sai Sudharsan slammed his third Indian Premier League century on Friday against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Bengaluru skipper Rajat Patidar has won the toss and has put Bengaluru to bat first, and in response, Sudharsan has scored a sublime 100 runs from 57 balls. After the 73 from 44 balls he scored against the Rajasthan Royals, Sudharsan has hit a bit of a lean patch, but against Bengaluru on a good batting deck at Chinnaswamy, the southpaw looked in imperious form with his shot-making. He slammed 11 boundaries and five sixes on his way to the three-digit mark. In a league like IPL, where the flamboyance and fearlessness of Priyansh Arya, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Ayush Mhatre have gained traction, Sai Sudharsan’s flair has also stood out. Of the many youngsters who dazzle in T20S with quirky shots or muscled hits, the Gujarat Titans opener stands apart with his conventional strokeplay. There is a stillness and compactness that’s quite impressive. In particular, his weight …

‘The ball left the bat unlike anyone else’

‘The ball left the bat unlike anyone else’

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The first time I saw him, he was 17 years old. We were in Jaipur, and he just proceeded to smash bowlers straight out of the park. My first thought was simple: this looks incredibly special. But it wasn’t the power that struck me. It was something far more specific — the way the ball left the bat. This is a deep cricketing thing, the kind that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived inside the game. The sound a ball makes when it’s hit. The way it projects itself forward. Very few people have that kind of timing — that fluid, almost effortless backlift that allows them to do it. It’s a rare gift. And Sanju possessed it as a teenager. What I came to understand over years of working with him is that a backlift isn’t just a technical choice. It’s DNA. It’s linked to something called depth perception — how you perceive an object coming towards you, and how your body automatically moves the bat in response. That movement, that precise …

Rishabh Pant explains why his bat slips out from his grip while attempting trademark one-handed six | Cricket News

Rishabh Pant explains why his bat slips out from his grip while attempting trademark one-handed six | Cricket News

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India player Rishabh Pant is known for his unorthodox stroke play with his USP being his trademark shot being the one-handed six where the bat often slips from his grips. In a recent conversation with JioHotstar, the 27-year-old explained why this happens. “I think it mostly happens because I hold my bottom hand very lightly. I mainly try to use my bottom hand for support because, at times, it starts dominating. So, I focus on gripping my top hand tightly,” said Pant. “But when I overreach—especially when the ball is too wide or too short—it’s not always in the ideal hitting zone. Sometimes, the shot I attempt may only have a 30-40% success rate, but depending on the match situation, I’m willing to take that risk. That’s my mindset,” he added. Story continues below this ad “When I take that chance and overreach, I need to do something to maintain balance. At times, it may look like I’m throwing the bat, but in reality, I’m just trying to make the most of that delivery. If …

Champions Trophy: How Matt Henry removed Shubman Gill by targeting his one batting weakness | Cricket News

Champions Trophy: How Matt Henry removed Shubman Gill by targeting his one batting weakness | Cricket News

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It’s amazing really how Shubman Gill hasn’t managed to erase that one weakness in his batting for all these years: the slow weight transfer onto the front foot. Sunday afternoon provided yet another iteration of the deja-vu. New Zealand in particular have done it often before; Kyle Jamieson on at least two occasions, Tim Southee and this time it was Matt Henry. Other bowlers too have got him with the same ball — Kagiso Rabada, James Anderson and Mohammad Shami (in the IPL). The television coverage has saturated our minds’ by now about what that good length is: say 6 to 8 metres from the batsman’s stumps. Matt Henry’s delivery landed on a length, say closer to the 8m and skidded in. Anything closer to him, Gill has no issues. Even closer to the 6m mark from his stumps, he has relatively less issues as he lets his wonderful hands do the jailbreak for him. Henry’s delivery skidded in a bit from that length and Gill was on the move, trying to work it around …

Why Javed Miandad, R Ashwin, Cheteshwar Pujara are impressed with Shubman Gill’s batting | Cricket News

Why Javed Miandad, R Ashwin, Cheteshwar Pujara are impressed with Shubman Gill’s batting | Cricket News

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The wily old Javed Miandad was impressed. It’s a show from a year ago where Miandad asks upcoming cricketers from Pakistan to look and learn from Shubman Gill’s batting. And his wrists in particular. Miandad, whose street-cred is well established in India-Pakistan battles, gestures the wrist-break of Gill: he gestures how Gill powers the ball and gives it direction by snapping his wrists. On Sunday, another wily customer, the recently-retired R Ashwin, cued up two balls from Shubman Gill to talk about Gill’s hands, feet, and the smart brain. The first ball is when Gill moved down the track to lift Shaheen Afridi’s length delivery up and over the infield to the long-on boundary. Ashwin points to how close Gill’s hands are to his body, and how his feet get ready to move. It’s a shot replayed on YouTube shorts and in highlights packages, but Ashwin is more impressed with what followed. On paper, it’s just a flick for a single, that turns to two due to an overthrow, but it’s interesting to see why …

Sanjay Bangar says Shubman Gill will lead India’s batting in years to come | Cricket News

Sanjay Bangar says Shubman Gill will lead India’s batting in years to come | Cricket News

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Former India player Sanjay Bangar heaped praises on India ODI vice-captain Shubman Gill and said that the Punjab player will lead the Indian team’s batting in the years to come. The 25-year-old continued his stellar performances in the ODI format when he made a classy 46 against Pakistan on Sunday. “Clearly, he’s the guy who is going to shoulder the responsibility of the Indian team going forward in years to come,” Bangar said on JioHotstar. “(His) foundations are really, really strong and add to that the confidence of nearly two-and-a-half years of performing in one-day cricket. In one-day cricket, he’s been phenomenal. Now look, the straight drive, the on-drive are the shots wherein you cannot actually hit the ball really hard. But here, he was hitting the ball so hard that despite the mid-off and the mid-on fielder being on that 30-yard circle, the ball was going and hitting them. That’s the kind of timing he possesses,” he added. Story continues below this ad Before his steady innings against Pakistan, Gill had scored a century …

ICC Champions Trophy: Ben Duckett adapts and resists to put on ODI masterclass | Cricket News

ICC Champions Trophy: Ben Duckett adapts and resists to put on ODI masterclass | Cricket News

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Ben Duckett isn’t an orthodox opener who accesses conventional areas of the field for his boundaries. However, he is no less effective as Australia found out as his 165 off just 142 deliveries took England to their highest score in ICC Champions Trophy history. Staying on the backfoot, cutting and flicking against pace while playing sweeps and reverse-sweeps to the tweakers is the 30-year-old’s gameplan. “Ben played hockey and rugby, as well as cricket, from a young age at Winchester House Prep School and throughout his time at Stowe. In hockey, he was a great exponent of reverse-hitting the ball and could already play the reverse-sweep and switch-hit when he arrived at Stowe,” James Knott, Duckett’s coach during his school days, told The Indian Express. To Duckett, sweeps and reverse-sweeps are like Rohit Sharma’s pull shot or Virat Kohli’s cover drive. But back in 2016 when he made his international debut, he did struggle against spin. Former India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin made him dance to his tunes on fairly docile surfaces when England toured India. …