England’s painstaking attention to detail the secret behind batting success

Mark Ramprakash tells Simon Hughes how his side's preparation led to two decent totals on a dustbowl in Kandy

England are back in Colombo now before the third Test starting on Friday. If you were at England training you might have seen a strange thing - a batsman practising on a rough, unprepared net surface.

This is quite unusual. Batsmen are normally very fussy about the quality of practice tracks. In fact many coaches will tell you that one of the reasons modern batsmen struggle against the moving ball is because as soon as they see it nipping around in the nets they ask to face easier throwdowns instead.  

But as England batting coach Mark Ramprakash tells us in this week's The Analyst Inside Cricket podcast, Jos Buttler in particular wasn’t satisfied with the nets in Colombo before the first Test.

They were too good. "So he asked to practice on a rough, under-prepared surface next door as he felt that would better replicate what he was likely to face in the Test," says Ramprakash.

"I threw him a load of balls on a length and he practised a variety of different sweeps." No surprise then that when Buttler came to the wicket in Kandy, sweeping - both conventional and reverse  - was his default. Joe Root was the same. Keaton Jennings too. 

Ramprakash had also introduced another practice innovation - white lines on the pitch aligned with leg and off stumps. "Facing faster bowlers, it's always said that batsmen need to know where their off stump is. You don’t hear that when you’re facing spinners.

"But its equally important understanding your angles, recognising when you’re getting your pad outside the line of off stump or when a ball is pitching outside leg stump and is therefore a free hit. Batsmen needed to know where their leg stump is against spinners and that’s why I get the white lines painted on a length," says Ramprakash. 

So England’s painstaking attention to detail was the secret behind their two decent totals on a dustbowl in Kandy. Seven wickets were lost to the sweep in England’s second innings from 81 attempted, which brought them 118 runs.

^{Keaton Jennings plays a reverse sweep}

The cynics would say that means they made 224 for 3 from conventional shots. But that completely misses the point. The sweep - and reverse sweep - not only messes up the bowlers field settings, finding gaps in orthodox field settings - but more importantly it messes up the spinners lines and lengths. 

The sweep is generally played to the spinner’s stock, good length ball. The way the batsmen practise sweeping now, its almost a risk free option to a length ball just outside off-stump. Taking a big stride and reaching out in front, batsmen can completely smother any threat from such deliveries and score runs from it too. It forces there spinner to seek other lengths and lines. And then runs can be garnered in more conventional ways.

So the 118 for 7 from sweeps enabled the 224 for 3  from all other shots. It gave England crucial momentum with the bat and runs to play with the ball. Runs on the board was the fundamental reason England won. And it's not often you’ve been able to say that in the recent past. Well done to the batsmen and coaches for their ingenuity.

By the way, if you think paddle sweeping is a relatively new phenomenon, check out Gideon Haigh's 'The Window' in our December Issue. Haigh looks at the first illustration of the sweep shot, in CB Fry's Book of Cricket. Subscriptions are available HERE.