England

Adil Rashid is almost as good a batsman as Stuart Broad

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Stuart Broad is the greatest batsman in the history of cricket. Everybody knows that. What people don’t know is that Adil Rashid is almost as good.

One of the great tragedies of England having loads of bowlers who can bat is that fans very rarely get to catch a glimpse of Adil Rashid attempting to square-drive yorkers off middle stump.

Rashid is a batsman who always plays the percentages. He doesn’t play them like other people though. The way Adil Rashid plays the percentages is he works out precisely which shot is most likely to result in his dismissal and then plays that one.

What follows is a five-step breakdown of a very good and fairly typical Adil Rashid shot.

Step 1: Inexplicably get on back foot to full length delivery and move front foot so that you can slog to leg – then slog to off.

Step 2: Sky cricket ball while leaping into the air slightly.

Step 3: No, seriously, absolutely sky it. Straight up.

Step 4: Nonchalant follow-through.

Step 5: Return to pavilion.

Update: For the sake of balance and to make our point more clearly and explicitly, here is a breakdown of Adil Rashid lofting the ball for four over backward point.

Similar deliveries:

Adil Rashid and the art of lofting the ball over backward point Default ThumbnailAdil Rashid braced for more knocks Default ThumbnailAdil Rashid has day one of the County Championship

27 comments

  1. With a lower order of Rashid, Wood, Archer and Broad England might soon, if we’re lucky, have four of the best test batsmen of all time playing in the same team. We are blessed.

    1. But we have to hurry. Soon Archer will get the hang of test match batting, and this glorious future will slip through our grasp.

  2. Reading this I got to wondering how much batting Adil has actually done recently. He doesn’t play red ball, which might be different from one day cricket, but at least everyone usually gets a bat. His oft enumerated first class centuries were all years ago now. He doesn’t play much domestic cricket at all. He bats at 9 or 10ish in the ODI and T20 so often doesn’t bat at all and when he does it is for a final overs brief hack.I can’t be bothered to do the research, but I doubt he has faced many more than 50 balls per annum in competitive cricket over the last two or three years. When people say he “bats a bit” they mean it.

    This may be why he seeks to get full value for every shot, as illustrated above. I have printed the images above off and made them into a flip books which gives a good impression of moving pictures, which I think may be the future of internet imagery.

    1. He’s very talented. The fact that he can pull off so many of his utterly ill-advised shots is proof of this.

    2. Sadly you know a cricketer is older than you would like to think, and therefore you yourself are older than you would like to think, when discussion of said “modern-era” cricketer took place on blogspot 🙁

      1. He was playing ill-advised shots brilliantly. That is how Adil Rashid plays. That is why he is great. And sometimes he doesn’t play them brilliantly. And that is also why he is great.

  5. Well I get your point and I think your right.
    For example, smashing a length ball back down the ground. He was probably trying to get out and had to reluctantly settle for four annoying runs.

  8. You can all now eat your own words! Curran and Rashid today, what an important partnership…. By the way what a piece of sh** this article is. How can someone spend time writing this?? Clearly nothing better to do.

  9. What a wonderfully unpredictable game cricket is.

    Adil Rashid has dominated ODI cricket of late as a bowler but really hasn’t shown as an ODI batsman. But today it was his batting that set up an unlikely win and his bowling (his first two spells anyway) was the weakest I’ve seen him bowl for a long long time.

    Twice anyone with cricket knowledge behind them would have written England off – at 145/8 with the bat and later having conceded 144/2…

    …but cricket doesn’t always do knowledge or common sense – sometimes it drums up magical performances and surprise results such as today’s game.

    Well writ, KC, don’t listen to the trolls. More stuff like this please – especially ahead of important matches.

  10. Can you write more negative articles about some important England players ahead of the tomorrow’s series decider.
    I think Joe Root’s bowling would be a good idea.
    He would be guaranteed t get something like 3-40 off 10 overs.

  11. Sams: 2
    Currans: 2
    Sam Currans: 1
    Non-Sam Currans: 1
    Sam Non-Currans: 1
    Non Sam, Non Currans: 8
    Non-(Sam Currans): 10

    With apologies to Dan Liebke.

    3. I read this out to Mrs. Smudge. She said something rather disparaging about “people who comment on cricket blogs”, conceding, nay, emphasising that I was one of them. I liked it though.

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