Sweeping generalisations
Talking of Bob Woolmer, in the autobiography I mention, IIRC he says that there are seven kinds of sweep shots in cricket (have I asked this before?). I know atleast four of them: the classical sweep (that ends up behind square of midwicket but not too fine, and is usually not played too much in the air), the reverse sweep (where a batsman turns his bat to play it on the offside, usually through the slips and towards third man). The other two are the paddle sweep (which is played very fine and past the wicketkeeper towards long leg and long stop) and the form that is very much in vogue of late, the slog sweep (that is played in front of square in the midwicket region and is often played in the air).I wonder what the other three are? I suspect Woolmer, like Warne does sometimes with regards to types of wrist-spinners, may be indulging in hair-splitting technical definitions. Sometimes people do that to keep up an aura of "guru" like knowledge of the sport. I would really like to know if there indeed are anymore.
Was thinking of notable examples of these 4 types. Though classical sweeping is well-practised by the subcontinent players and briefly by the South Africans in their tours here, Graham Gooch's century in the '87 WC semis against India almost entirely consisted of it and hence springs to mind. The reverse sweep is a tricky one. Was reportedly invented by Mushtaq Mohammad, played with great skill by Javed Miandad and of late by Andy Flower, and most notoriously, caused the downfall of Mike Gatting and consequently England in the '87 WC final. Quite ironical that. I guess hardly anyone plays the paddle (or lap shot) better than Sachin Tendulkar and for the slog sweep, I guess Steve Waugh would be the most cited exponent.
No comments:
Post a Comment