A method to Hughes’ madness

Hughes possesses a wildly unconventional technique. His feet scratch patterns around the crease that often deviate wildly from those prescribed by the coaching manual. Like Virender Sehwag,his game is predicated upon staying next to the line of the ball and flaying the ball through the off side.

Unlike Sehwag,Hughes is left-handed. When he’s in form,the predominant angle he faces gives him more room to play these shots. When he isn’t,he’s much likelier to edge the ball. Unlike Sehwag,Hughes is jumpy and diffident at the crease; his body language doesn’t betray a great deal of confidence in his own methods.

Because of all this,he looks ugly when he fails. His critics don’t have to dig deep to find a reason when that happens: it’s his technique,silly. It’s far more difficult to pinpoint why someone with a textbook style goes through a lean patch.

At this point,Hughes has middling numbers in Test cricket. An average in the mid-30s,and three centuries in 25 matches. But what centuries they were: two in one Test,his second,against Steyn,Ntini and Morkel in Durban; a match-saving third-innings 126 in Colombo to defy Rangana Herath,who took seven wickets in the innings.

Despite that effort,his struggles in India earned him the label of being clueless against spin. Graeme Swann,who boasts a phenomenal record against left-handers,was expected to swallow Hughes alive during the Ashes. But during that innings of 81,he played the off spinner very well. He stayed back to almost everything,and defended with an open front shoulder. It wasn’t orthodox,but he ensured that his front pad wasn’t getting in the way of that skidding straighter ball,thus negating Swann’s deadliest weapon. In this case,the unconventional method became the sensible method. But don’t expect technique fetishists to agree with that.

Karthik is a principal correspondent based in New Delhi

karthik.krishnaswamy@expressindia.com