Posted by The thing about Ibrahim Zadran is he’s done this before. Everyone forgets because his incredible World Cup hundred against Australia was only the second-best knock that day.
He did however play – for our money – the finest shot of that particular match. Glenn Maxwell’s was a nonsense innings positively awash with nonsense shots, but none matched the delightfully productive geometric collision that was Ibrahim Zadran’s ramp shot off Pat Cummins.
It is a moment worth revisiting. In fact you should go and revisit it now. Go and read that article – open it in another tab – and then come back here for the rest of this article. Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you.
Okay, you back?
Zadran made 129 that day and it was not a fluke innings. The guy averages over 50 after 35 one-day internationals, only one of which has been against a non-Test-playing nation (20 off 34 balls in a facile chase against the Netherlands).
Yesterday, against England, he made 177 and at one point or other exquisitely executed pretty much every shot going.
His first boundary was another of those bonkers ramp shots.
The shot he employed most frequently was the acutely-angled-bat drive that sends the ball to the boundary square on the off side.
The full face of the bat straight drive came out too. As did the flat-bat over the bowler’s head. He swept, he glanced, he hoicked. He ran down the pitch and larruped.
Zadran even appeared to apply fade to one straight drive off Jamie Overton, almost as if he wanted to play the ball not over the bowler, but round him.
At one point he played a shot that made batting coach Younus Khan – who knows a thing or two about this kind of thing – smile and shout “shot!”
None of these were his best shot, because midway through the 43rd over, Mark Wood cramped him for room and in so doing successfully saved two runs.
As Wood released the ball, Zadran tried to give himself room – but you can see here how Wood’s delivery didn’t allow for that.
This is a really horrible position to find yourself in as a batter: effectively retreating from a ball that’s spearing into you at a time when you were specifically trying to get away from it to get a good, clean swing at the thing.
Your balance is all wrong. The ball is in the wrong place. All your limbs are moving in the wrong planes.
And yet this is what Zadran did.
Wood was still topping 90mph in this over, but somehow Ibrahim Zadran was able to instantaneously skip his back leg over, balance himself and slot the ball back over Wood’s head and onto the boundary Toblerone.
One can only assume that had the delivery been even fractionally less awkward, it could have travelled 10cm further, if not more.
Not the most entertaining passage of cricket resulting from a shot played by someone called Zadran though. That would be this.
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