Net flicks and Prithvi Shaw

Delhi Capitals’ head coach Ricky Ponting’s revelation about his young batsman not keen on nets when out of form, is a fascinating addition to practice-related folklore; Shaw similar to England’s Philip Mead

Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting came up with a fascinating revelation about his team’s young India batsman Prithvi Shaw. Ponting told cricket.com.au recently that Shaw doesn’t head to the nets when he is short of runs but practises extensively only when he is in form.

This is a fine addition to the log of stories concerning net practice over the years.

Let me take you back to a Test career that started in 1911. England’s left-handed batsman Philip Mead hated nets, be it in form or off form. In fact, he used to frown upon batsmen spending time in the nets before a game. In John Arlott’s Book of Cricketers, the illustrious writer and broadcaster wrote of the Hampshire great: “He [Mead] would sometimes go for weeks without a minute of net practice. Once he made a hundred in the county’s first match of the season. When he came back into the dressing room, Alec Kennedy greeted him: ‘Well played, Philip.’ ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Mead answered. ‘I never really hit the ball once.’ ‘When did you last have a bat in your hand?’ asked Alec. ‘Last Scarborough Festival.’ ‘Then it was well played,’ said Kennedy with the last word.”

And just as county batsmen felt proud if they had a better start to the county season than him, he used to tell them: “You lead in May and I shall catch you in June.”

Doug Walters, the Australian batsman, whose peak performances spiced up the late 1960s and 1970s, was no net junkie either. Some of his teammates reckoned that a game of cards and a singular crack of the dressing room dartboard were ideal preparation for an innings. Walters’s teammate Len Pascoe once provided their captain Ian Chappell the perfect net practice in the 1978-79 West Indies leg of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. Pacer Pascoe tried to duck a net session and was not on the team bus in Barbados. Chappell noticed the absentee and instructed Pascoe’s friend Jeff Thomson to get him to the Kensington Oval in a cab as the bus departed.

Pascoe was angry that he had been summoned to the ground, which had probably cost him a stiff cab fare when he could be enjoying the scenic Caribbean.  

Gideon Haigh in The Cricket War wrote that Chappell went over to the net, which Pascoe ended up bowling in. For the next 20 minutes, Chappell was put on a diet of short, aggressive and dangerous bowling which even alarmed the spectators in the net area. “I think this Lennie [Pascoe] want to kill you, man,” one of the locals said, according to Haigh. And cricket writer Phil Wilkins called it, “The finest exhibition of net batting I’ve ever seen.” Hence, it’s no surprise that Chappell told Pascoe: “Thanks Lennie. Best work-out I’ve had in a long time.”

England legend Geoff Boycott loved his net sessions. There is a story about him wanting a net session immediately after he scored one of his two hundreds in England’s successful Ashes campaign in 1970-71, but he couldn’t find a teammate who would bowl to him.

Sudhir Naik, who led Mumbai to a Ranji Trophy triumph in the same season, told me yesterday how skipper Ajit Wadekar ordered net practice despite Mumbai beating Bihar in the 1973-74 Ranji Trophy quarter-final at Jamshedpur. “Since Padmakar Shivalkar and me had performed well, we were excused. Ajit was not happy with the team’s batting so he wanted them to iron out their faults in the nets,” recalled Naik. Unfortunately for Mumbai, they lost to Karnataka in the semis to break their 15-year stranglehold on the Ranji Trophy.

Dennis Amiss, who batted for England in the 1960s and 1970s, was not happy with his performance on the 1972-73 tour of India. He discussed his problems with India team members S Abid Ali, Bishan Singh Bedi and S Venkataraghavan. In the book In Search of Runs, Amiss said that the trio offered to bowl to him in the nets after the fifth and final Test at Mumbai. “Such a lengthy, concentrated session against three high-class bowlers enabled me to adjust my methods, especially against the turning ball. More than anything, I think, it taught me to play every ball on its merit,” he wrote in the book, In Search of Runs. Amiss went on to become one of England’s heroes on the next Test series on Indian soil in 1976-77 which the Warwickshire batsman started with a match-winning 179 in New Delhi.

The other day, Mumbai stalwart Amol Muzumdar told Cyrus Broacha on Cyrus Says how Salil Ankola and Paras Mhambrey bowled only bouncers to him in the nets for half an hour during a Ranji Trophy practice session. “I didn’t put bat to ball even once. They were all bouncers. They bounced the s**t out of me,” revealed Muzumdar, who threw his bat in frustration, asking the late team manager Ramakant Desai whether this was a practice session with the pace duo laughing at the top of their mark.

Shaw’s penchant to bat in the nets only when he is getting runs is not something that should equate to not caring enough about his game. 

It’s probably his way of saying that I understand my game better than anyone else and this is how I plan to go about things.

Hope he ends up being vindicated and scores heavily for Delhi Capitals. Else, he’ll be forced to hit the nets even swifter than the fast-talking Ponting utters Jack Robinson.

mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello
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