Originally posted by 70_degree_spin There's this bowler at my school who just bowls bouncers. Needless to say he hardly takes any wickets.

I went to this club training session to see if i felt like joining them. Every bowler bowled a bouncer. Thats all they did. They only wanted to hit the batsman. Needless to say i thought they were &"("! and left.

I just practiced glides, flicks and drop and run shots off faster men, and when they bowled up to me used to throw the kitchen sink at it. Most of them sails over the boundry straight, when they are up to me. Short balls I just try to defend my head being smashed

When spinners are on (horror of horror only three of them in a squad of 40 for the university excluding myself) down the track, inside out over extra cover was my favorite shot. Unfortunately one of them was a Derek Underwood type left arm spinner (6' 3" in height) who was firing it in. Others also did not know how to flight it (i was the only one who threw it up over the eye line of batsmen). SO did not have much opportunities to play it.

Batting in nets was not fun for me, because every fast bowler targeted me to test their bouncers, but never tested their yorkers on me

Originally posted by RightHandBat Originally posted by henjam leaving the ball is something all good batsmen should practice at, why play at a ball you don't need to if the shot you will try to play won't produce a run? All you are doing is risking the chance of losing your wicket, thats why i think leaving the ball is incredibly important Scoring fast in One Day cricket is essential, so that's why you should be working on a shot for every ball, because if you do, you will find that you will succeed more often.

I play in 48 over matches, so there is still plenty of time to leave good balls, especially early on in my innings!

I think people have a funny attitude about leaving balls in the nets though.  Bowlers think you are a pussy and others think you are a waste of a 15 minute batting time! My team mates are so used to me hitting anything absolutely necessary now, they know if they want me to play a shot they will have to bowl accurately.  At the end of the day we all benefit from it.

I suggest most people playing at a fairly high level have techniques that are fine and maybe the flaw in his technique is ball leaving so that is why he practices it. I also believe that there is no perfect technique, look at all  the modern batsman, all have flaws. It's about producing runs, I have seen many batsman that look very pretty but do not produce runs. I think the key to working on your game is videoing some of your nets, people can explain things all they want but until you see it for yourself you will rarley improve.

oh but my techniques are fine :)