Hughes can save his career by reverting to his old style

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 21 Dec 2011 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

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Hughes can save his career by reverting to his old style + enlarge image

Phil Hughes had some luck and will lead the run chase in the second Test match (AP Photo/Chris Crerar)

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The shot that Phillip Hughes played to sky a ball gently for the wicket-keeper M.S.Dhoni was the dispirited attempt at aggression of a batsman whose confidence is about as low as a good limbo-dancer.

Australia’s tour match against the Indians told us a lot yesterday. For good players, batting is an easy art when they are in the zone and the runs and luck are flowing. But when the cricket demons undermine your game, batting becomes a fraught venture. You seem to get unplayable balls all the time. Your partner will run you out. Fieldsmen catch your screamers.

In a short, walking on burning coals seems an easier and more pleasant pastime than trying to put together an innings and a total that are not embarrassing.

Which brings us to the case of Phillip Hughes.

The first thing he should do is go back to the method that brought so much success early on in his first-class cricket career. This had him withdrawing slightly to the leg side as the bowler delivered the ball. Then, when he reckoned he had enough room for an off-side slash, he went at the ball with a blade of swishing ferocity.

Occasionally, he got caught in the slips early on, as he was in his first Test innings against the South African tearaway, Dale Steyn. More often, as he did in the next innings, Hughes slashed and smashed the ball through the off-side field with a panache and force that suggested a career destined for greatness.

Some sort of failures against the high bounce of ‘Freddie’ Flintoff bowling around the wicket (the same angle that undid Adam Gilchrist in an earlier Ashes series) suggested a weakness. Hughes was dropped. He was told to eliminate the weakness. And his batting has gone from tremendous to terrible.

There are two things to say about all of this.

First, Hughes should go back to his old style that worked so well for him.

And second, he should play all forms of cricket, especially Twenty20.

Few great attacking batsmen are technically perfect. Barry Richards, Greg Chappell, Martin Crowe, and Sachin Tendulkar, in the modern era, are exceptions to my general rule. Most successful attacking batsmen have unusual aspects to their play. And the unorthodox method becomes the strong point.

The classic example is Don Bradman. When he played against a visiting England side early on in his career, his cross-batted, flaying, wind-up style provoked the captain of Surrey, Percy Fender, to declare that the brilliant ‘boy from the bush’ could never score on English pitches with the ball moving around off the seam.

Bradman took delight in making a double century against Surrey on his first tour of England.

Incidentally, arguably Australia’s greatest bowler, Bill O’Reilly, was told early on his career by Arthur Mailey that he would have to change his grip and his method if he wanted to be successful in first-class cricket.

O’Reilly retained a healthy distrust (bordering on contempt) for coaches and coaching. Bradman did too. On the 1949 tour to England, Neil Harvey asked Sam Loxton to get him some guidance from Bradman about his batting. “Tell him not to hit the ball in the air,” Bradman responded.

It is this forthright common sense that Hughes needs now. Instead his coaches have got him changing his method by moving to the off rather than to the leg as the ball is bowled. He is now in two minds about whether to go for his trademark slash through the slips, or block the ball, or let it go.

There is another aspect of the off-side shuffle, as well. He is now moving his bat across to the wider ball. But he is not moving his head and eyes across. The result is more nicks and fewer run-making strokes.

One of the fallacies of coaching is that a batsman must get his foot to the ball. In actual fact, the eyes over the ball rather than the foot to the ball is the essential element of good batting. Denis Compton, for instance, was notorious for the way he played his drives and his sweeps with his foot well away from the line of the ball. But Compton’s eyes were invariably and correctly over the ball when he was playing his often cheeky and improvised shots.

Giving up the shorter forms of the game to concentrate on the longer form, as Hughes has decided to do, will compound his problems. Until now, anyway, Hughes has not had concentration problems. His short career glitters with long and prolific innings.

He needs to get his mojo back, not his concentration. And this will come if he plays the forms of cricket that allow him to play instinctively, as he did in the past.

Hughes needs to be allowed to come back into form by being Hughes.

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