Posted by Dear Short Ball,
I would be most grateful if you would come round later on. I will pull out all the stops for you. You can sit in my armchair. I will bring you drinks. I even have some of your favourite cake.
Don’t worry about replying. All of this is no trouble at all.
Looking forward to seeing you,
Suresh
No-one invites the short ball quite like Suresh Raina. We don’t know if we’ve ever seen a professional batsman play short-pitched bowling so consistently badly as he did during his brief stay at the crease in the second innings at Trent Bridge.
Surely that was some sort of freakish one-off? The guy’s played 153 international matches, after all. No-one – particularly someone who’s barely five feet tall – could possibly have reached that level while being so jaw-droppingly incompetent at such a major aspect of batting.
That’s not a joke and it’s barely rhetoric. He couldn’t be that bad, could he?
Indian batsmen drive hard, but aren’t hookers.
In most of his international matches, bowlers had to pitch it up and he slaughters them there. Fine leg inside the circle in ODIs so he can top edge his pulls and still get boundaries. His best hope is to learn to leave the ball, I can’t see him becoming a good puller or hooker.
We don’t mean this nastily, but he needs to get hit by a few.
Most of his mistakes seemed to result from his being fearful. The bat’s for defending the stumps or scoring runs. Defending your torso achieves little, but you can still get out.
Kohli is coming in for injured Yuvraj for the 3rd test. I hope they do play him ahead of Raina. Kohli hasn’t started his test career in any great fashion but he won’t be running scared against the short ball, that’s for sure. If Sehwag stays unfit then both of them may end up playing.
Suresh Raina used to be much taller than “barely five feet tall”.
It is one of those tragic, freakish matters; poor little Suresh shrank in the wash quite recently and is struggling to come to terms with his new (lack of) stature.
he did not hookthat badly. On an indian ground it would have been a six.
I don’t think one should get a six for a top edge in a test. It’s not t20.
This is an awesome idea
There should be a gymnastics style judging panel marking both the batsmans strokes and the quality of the bowling out of 10.
The players total score will be an amalgamation of runs scored and the quality of their strokeplay.
The judging panel will consist of Geoff Botcott, Rob Key & the ghost of Fred Trueman
ROOOBISH
amalgama what. eh
“On an indian ground it would have been a six.”
An Indian burial ground maybe.