The Left and Right Spectrum

As I arrived at Newdigate Street this Saturday, and drove through the entrance, I nearly turned straight back around and left. My heart sank after gazing out across the field and seeing the wickets pitched at the far end of the square. The 30 yard circle almost kissed the boundary, and I immediately stomped across to stride it out myself. At its closest point I estimated it was just 35 yards, and as a spinner the alarm bells began ringing in my head.

In the end, any fears I had were dissipated by two mesmerising knocks from Andy Platts and Mick Blatherwick, which took the game away from Wollaton, and enabled us to bowl with the confidence of a large score behind us. With a tough score to chase, Wollaton had to come hard at us, and with a plethora of early breakthroughs we were able to secure the positive result we wanted.

One thing that was very noticeable on Saturday was the lack of left handed batsmen in the team (just me unfortunately!). Obviously, when you have one short boundary it is nice to have at least one batsman at either end who is able to exploit it. With us only having right handers at the top of the order, and the umpires offering a generous interpretation of the wide law outside off stump, it enabled the opposition to employ a negative tactic to make it difficult for us to score to the short boundary.

Brian Lara on the drive

It does pose an interesting question. Is it of a distinct advantage to be a left handed batsman? This has been a much debated question over the generations. There is no doubt that a number of the best players of all time have been left handers (Sobers, Lara, Pollock, Border, Lloyd, Gower et al.). Indeed, a look at top eight teams in the Test rankings tells you that of the 48 batsmen that regularly make up the top six in each team, 15 of them are left handed.  Considering only 10% of the population are deemed to be left handed and this represents 30% of the total, it is a clear overrepresentation. But why?

Well firstly there are some obvious advantages. Generally it is much tougher to get a left hander out LBW. Right handed bowlers bowling over the wicket have to get the ball to straighten if they are to induce the umpire to raise their finger. Left arm over bowlers are an increasing rarity, so the left handed batsman does not have to face the same issues as the right hander.

Secondly, bowlers in general just aren’t as good at bowling to the left hander as the right hander. They perfect the away swinger to the right hander in the hope of forcing an edge to the keeper or slips, but this proves less effective to the left hander as it becomes an in-swinger. In addition, slip fielders at club level rarely practise catching to the left side. Most feeds prepare them for fielding to a right hander and so they become less comfortable moving to their left.

Some bowlers employ the tactic of bowling around the wicket, but more often than not they are uncomfortable bowling this side as again, they do not practise it enough during the week. Perhaps there is a sense of arrogance amongst the bowlers that they will not change their plan. But all this does is often feed a batsman’s confidence when a bowler is forced to come around the wicket as ‘plan B’.

Scientists have argued that left handers also have a biological advantage. The possession of right brain to left side wiring gives them increased special awareness, and the capacity to think and react quickly to three dimensional moving objects.

I also argue that it is an advantage being a natural right hander, but left handed batsman. This means that your top hand is your strong arm, and as a result it resists the temptation for your bottom hand to come through and create ugly shots!

So should we get our young right handers to turn around and bat left handed to increase their chances? One of our close family friends , Ian Whitehouse, was a talented all round cricketer who was right handed but batted left handed. The reason for this? Well his father, a talented bowler in the Yorkshire leagues, hated bowling to left handers. So as he brought up his son’s (and grandson’s for that matter), all were turned around and told that ‘this is the only way to bat!’ All of them went on to be talented players, and certainly gave support to the argument that left handers are the scourge of many a bowler.

Let’s just hope that both our left handers at the top of the order (Dan and Akhil) in the 1^st XI can continue to show the form that suggests they can dominate the Premier League scoring charts for the season.