by a Thinker, Sailor, Blogger, Irreverent Guy from Madras

Why are short batsmen so effective?


Finally the Cricketing world seems to have woken up to the fact that short batsmen, from Don Bradman, Alvin Kalicharan, to Sunil Gavaskar, Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar, are very effective.

The article examines the ability of the short batsmen to pull ferociously, pirouetting quiet quickly, smartly - due to their lower Centre of Gravity (which is not explained in the article).
The next point which is raised in the article is the difficulty in bowling to such batsmen on correct length.

I feel that point will be hard to justify for two reasons.  If true, then all the world's greatest batsmen should be short.  Or at least the number of runs scored by batsmen who are within 5' 6" should be considerably higher than those who pop up over five and half feet.

If Sachin Tendulkar at 5' 5" is the world's leading run scorer in Test Cricket, he is quickly followed by near six footers.  The second highest is the 5' 10" Ricky Ponting, 3rd is Jacques Kallis at 6' 2", followed by Rahul Dravid who is in between at 5' 11".

I also find it difficult to believe that it is difficult to bowl a worrying length to such tiny batsmen.

What happened in the case of the unfortunate Phil Hughes proves that batting in cricket can be dangerous, and requires utmost concentration, whether you are short or tall.  Phil Hughes at just one inch over the five and half feet arbitrary scale could not dodge that fatal delivery.







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