Harry Brook struck a magnificent 81 off just 35 balls against Pakistan in the third T20I to help his side post a mammoth 222 at Karachi’s National Stadium.
England’s strategy in the ongoing series has been pretty clear cut. To go hard from ball one. The pair of Phil Salt and debutant Will Jacks started well in the powerplay before England were struck back a bit by the quick wickets of Dawid Malan and Will Jacks.
Now the pair of Ben Duckett and Harry Brook took on the charge despite losing two quick wickets. Pakistan’s two main spin bowlers in Mohammad Nawaz and Usman Qadir were taken to the attack. Qadir, in particular was more expensive as sometimes he can lose control on his lines and lengths.
Numbers suggest that Ben Duckett is one of the better players of spin as he has shown so far. The left-hander has employed the paddle sweep, flat sweep and reverse sweep to put the spinners completely off their lengths. Could Pakistan have done something different, maybe have an over or two with the quicks? The counter to that would be then who would bowl at the death?
Now as the title of this article suggests, Brook’s innings showed us why T20 is a game of both touch and power. Just as he faced the fifth ball of his innings, he charged down the track to hit Usman Qadir back over his head for a maximum.
Couple of balls later in the same over, Qadir thought about the dangling the ball way outside off stump to get him out of his reach. Brook once again charged down the track to smear the ball over cover region for another huge hit. The key to that shot was the alignment to the ball and keeping his body nice and side-on. Just around the point of contact, see his back foot working behind his body, which is a ‘scissor move’ or a ‘kickback’ which locks the hips and transfers the force into the upper half and into the contact zone. You can see this move showing up in other striking sports as well.
Brook employs a bat up method, which means that he has already lifted his bat up in his set-up as he prepares to the face the ball. However, the rhythm of his batting isn’t disrupted as he gets in sync with the bowlers quite well.
If you watch some of his boundaries from yesterday’s innings, a lot of the times he has moved outside leg-stump to open up different scoring options for himself. For example, in the 14th over when Rauf came onto bowl, Brook moved just outside leg-stump. Rauf followed him with a short ball which he couldn’t get up high up and Brook just used the pace to hit the ball over fine-leg boundary.
He had played a similar shot against Dahani as well in the second T20I. The difference was the height of the ball but still Brook was able to get enough on it to get the ball sailing over the fence.
In the 15th over against Mohammad Hasnain, Brook did the same thing. The ball had landed on a good length as Hasnain followed the batter who had moved away outside leg-stump. Instead of muscling the ball, Brook just used the pace to guide the ball away from backward point and also defeated the third man fielder in the deep.
Then next up in the 16th over against Shahnawaz Dahani, Brook triggered onto off-stump in what would be the normal position and then slammed the bowler over deep mid-wicket boundary for a maximum.
Right on the next ball, again he moved outside leg-stump to squeeze an almost yorker length ball outside off-stump to backward point region for another boundary.
Once again against Haris Rauf in the 17th over, the backing away move worked for Brook as he smacked a back of a length ball over the infield on the off-side since all the fielders were in the deep on leg-side. This also shows his ability to hit one delivery on a particular line and length to different parts of the ground.
The best shot of the innings from him came in the second last over, when Dahani, after getting smacked back down the ground for a maximum, bowled an excellent yorker in the blockhole outside off-stump but Brook just opened the face and guided the ball past the short third man for a boundary. At that point, the bowler couldn’t have done anything else, it was just too good batting on display.
Then in the last over, Brook decided to get over the head of short fine-leg with a scoop. Brook’s team-mate Luke Wood says it is very hard to bowl at him since plays the scoop over short fine. "You have to have fine leg back so you're effectively playing with four fielders because then he won't play it. He hits wide well, and you can't follow him because if you get that side of him, he picks you up. You've got a very small margin of error to him," said Wood as quoted by Cricinfo.
With still four T20Is to go in this series, Pakistan have to come up with something to stop him, otherwise he will continue to pose problems.