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Up or down?

I hate the joke about London buses and two coming along at once but the point it makes is interesting and one that does seem to happen often in life (or is it just a matter of perception?).

Batting stances are not something I've paid huge amounts of attention to in the past, mainly because I've always believed that results matter, technique doesn't. And in cricket, more than many other sports, success is more about mental strength than technical ability.

So to come across not one but two articles on the very same (and not oft written about) topic of bat position was very educational to say the least. The first one was more informational and a touch provocative in that it takes a relatively firm stance that bat down is better than up. The second one was more specifically about Root and his technical deficiencies stemming from being bat up. Interestingly they were written by the same person so clearly SB Tang feels deeply about the issue.

Not deeply enough though to look at batsmen beyond Australia and England and understand the issue at a more global level (there is a passing mention of Jacques Kallis somewhere in there. My feeling is that batsmen in most other countries (and certainly Asian batsmen) are all taught to be bat down but that might be changing. Maybe a topic for a future post sometime if I find enough time to "research" on YouTube :-)

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