...And so to Monday and back to the salt mines where we labour long and hard and are appreciated not...Unlike Kevin KP Pietersen who’s splendid century set up an absolute romp of a victory for England in the ODI against the Kiwis yesterday. Arguably poor old neglected Owais Shah’s excellent 49 from 29 balls was as good, but it’s KP as usual who grabs all the headlines.
The reason this time though is his switch hitting which is an extension of the reverse sweep and was first unfurled against Mattiah Muralitharan a couple of years ago.
Basically as the bowler delivers, KP flips hands and stance so that he’s mirroring his usual one and almost playing a left hander’s shot and yesterday he tonked Scott Styris for two sixes in the most audacious manner.
It was phenomenal to watch and extremely exciting and of course this has naturally led traditionalists to mutter into their beards about whether it should be banned.
Now we’re all for preserving the traditions of the game, but in this case the nay sayers are wrong. Maybe a couple of other laws will need amending (which becomes legstump, how wides and LBW will work, field placings etc.) but in this case we should definitely encourage innovation, not punish it.
This is the kind of audacious stroke which absolutely lights up the shorter form of the game and is compelling to watch, even if it’ll just be for the comedy value of watching lesser batsman try to play it.
1 comment:
I reckon they should take a good look at this before they ban it. If it becomes commonplace .. then they might have to do something about it. But as you say the potential comedy value is massive.
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