The folly of shielding the tail

[thevortex]

Absolutely! VVS is the master at this skill. Invest trust in the tail and get them to contribute. That is just invaluable. Not everybody can do it. It is time to acknowledge Laxman's intangible contribution in this regard.

[The Outsider]

Mods, can you please lock this thread after putting a custom title of 'Mashallah I hz been pwned' under all users wanting to 'shield' the tail. :winky:

[King Tendulkar]

^:hysterical: He did attempt to shield Oijha though! But yeah he took the single every time for Ishant(apart from last few overs) and it worked!

[Ram]

Mods' date=' can you please lock this thread after putting a custom title of 'Mashallah I hz been pwned' under all users wanting to 'shield' the tail. :winky:[/quote'] And the same Mods can also unlock the thread and put the custom title ‘Inshallah, I haz been re-pwned’ under that single user, the next time some shields the tail and scores runs (or) doesn’t shield the tail and fails. One swallow doesn’t make a summer. :winky: Two red herring about the VVS – Ishant p’ship as to why it doesn’t fit the bill of classic ‘tail-shield’ 1)Ishant is no mug with the bat. He has the technique to survive against even reasonable quality bowling. The argument that has always been made against the ‘trust your tailender’ strategy is that you cannot possibly simply turn over the strike even for absolute novice of batsmen. And that stand was amply vindicated when the same VVS, who’s often heralded as some sort of champion for this new-age approach, actually shielded Ojha. So there ya go. :winky: 2)Ishant scored 31 runs, but the p’ship was worth 82 runs. So majority of the scoring was done by the specialist batsmen in the p’ship, even though he faced the minority of the strike. Ishant’s job was simply to survive, most of the runs he scored were either accidental (edges, glides past the slip) or incidental (genuine defensive pushes that went in the gap..)

[Manny_Pacquiao]

haha, i thought of this thread when i was watching Laxman taking single off first ball and allowing ishant to play out the overs. its a nice strategy, and ishant is like the indian jason gillespie in how he dead bats everything around him and can leave the right deliveries. but at the end of the day, laxman still had to shield every so often, especially when mitchell johnson was bowling. he nearly flipped out when ojha didnt take the single on hilfenhaus' 2nd last ball. didnt matter since india won the game off ojha's bat (well...pad) but they could have made it a lot easier for themsleves if they had laxman facing.

[Manny_Pacquiao]

btw, this is one of the best threads i have read here on icf. some nice arguments from both sides

[Precambrian]

lol at op..

[kabira]

Laxman trusted Ishant, gave him strike all the time. But when were 13-14 runs away. suddenly he lost faith in him, totally screwed up his game. And then Ishant gets out. Don't know why he had to change the strategy that was working well.

[DomainK]

Laxman trusted Ishant, gave him strike all the time. But when were 13-14 runs away. suddenly he lost faith in him, totally screwed up his game. And then Ishant gets out. Don't know why he had to change the strategy that was working well.

I think when Mitch came to bowl, they both decided to keep Ishant away from strike.

[vvvslaxman]

Think about Pakistan team lol They have 11 tailenders.

[kabira]

I think when Mitch came to bowl' date=' they both decided to keep Ishant away from strike.[/quote'] But Mitch had bowled to him initially and Ishant faced him confidently. So when there were few runs left, victory in sight, Laxman changed the strategy and you can see Ishant lost confidence and looked like getting out.

[littlemaster1982]

Kabira, Seems you missed this part in Laxman's interview.

What impressed me most about him was the temperament. We had little chats in the middle. And when, towards the end, Mitchell Johnson troubled him, he told me he wasn't comfortable facing him. Then only I started to try and face more of Johnson. It was important to have that trust. There was no way I could have done it alone. But I have always had a lot of confidence in Ishant.

[kabira]

I did not read that. But if thats true, why was there so much confusion about running?

[DomainK]

I did not read that. But if thats true' date=' why was there so much confusion about running?[/quote'] I dont think there was much confusion about running. They were doing a very good job of it. It was only once when Ojha stood watching the ball and failed to take the single that was clearly available that Laxman gave him a mouthful.

[Ram]

*Bumpski..:winky: Probably a good time to bump this thread. Who else here thinks the last 10th wicket for India would have added an excess of 100 runs, had Bhajji adopted the ‘trust-your-tailender’ strategy and simply obliged Vettori’s deep set-fields by taking the single off the first ball of every over? I don’t.

[Lord]

*Bumpski..:winky: Probably a good time to bump this thread. Who else here thinks the last 10th wicket for India would have added an excess of 100 runs, had Bhajji adopted the ‘trust-your-tailender’ strategy and simply obliged Vettori’s deep set-fields by taking the single off the first ball of every over? I don’t.

Sree was playing Vettori quite well.so u never know

[The Outsider]

*Bumpski..:winky: Probably a good time to bump this thread. Who else here thinks the last 10th wicket for India would have added an excess of 100 runs, had Bhajji adopted the ‘trust-your-tailender’ strategy and simply obliged Vettori’s deep set-fields by taking the single off the first ball of every over? I don’t.

Yeah, the number 11 played 12 out of 26 overs of the partnership. Some shielding that was. :winky:

[Ram]

Yeah' date=' the number 11 played 12 out of 26 overs of the partnership. Some shielding that was. :winky:[/quote'] It would seem like that if you just gloss over the numbers. But if you had actually seen the match (don’t know if you did), you would know that there was a clear strategy to keep Sreesanth away from the pacers and have him face Vettori as much as possible. Or in laymen’s terms, he was shielded from the pacers. :winky: It was pretty obvious that Sreesanth had quite a bit of discomfort facing some short bowling from the pacers, especially from Southie and was shielded from them from Bhajji. But If it were upto you, Bhajji should have done what Vettori wanted him to do with the deep set fields – take a single in the offering off the first ball of every over. But leave aside that, I doubt if anybody who saw that partnership would have even an inkling of doubt as to what was happening out there. Bhajji refused dozens of singles, almost every over from the pacers and there was a clear focus on Bhajji doing the scoring and Sreesanth spending as much time as possible at the non-striker's end, especially when the pacers were bowling. You can deny that if you want, but it doesnt change the underlying theme of the partnership.

[The Outsider]

I did not watch any of the match, but am quite happy to believe that Harbhajan tried to harness some strike against the fast bowlers. That's not unusual at all. Even Laxman and Waugh have done it when it was apparent that a particular bowler is troubling a batsman. But overall the numbers don't suggest any shielding. In fact, in the Bangalore test against Australia when Dhoni tried to shield Ojha he refused many runs, could not hit any big stroke, and got out a couple of overs later trying to take a needless risk against the spinner. Those dismissals are common when batsmen shield tails. This thread has numerous examples of them. And you are talking about Harbhajan as if he is some natural born batsman! Remember, if the Indian team had been following your strategy of shielding the tail then Harbhajan's batting would have never come to this stage in the first place. Ishant would never have been able to play the innings at Mohali if Tendulkar and shielded him at Sydney. Gillespie would have never played so many obdurate innings if the Australians were shielding him. Anyhow, I have pretty much made all the points that need to be made on the topic. The clincher perhaps came from Ishant Sharma himself when after the Mohali innings he said something along the lines that the confidence that Laxman and the team place in his batting abilities is the biggest reason why he was able to play such an innings. Meanwhile, you can continue bumping this thread every time a tail end batsman plays 12 out of 26 overs as proof of shielding. :winky:

[Ram]

Meanwhile, you can continue bumping this thread every time a tail end batsman plays 12 out of 26 overs as proof of shielding. :winky:

So what is the magic number that qualifies in your mind as 'shielding'? The tail-ender should face only 10% of the overs? 20% of the overs? Do you even think it is possible, even by a specialist batsman to hog so much of the strike, let alone by a bowling all-rounder? The point I am trying to make is there should be a concerted effort on part of the specialist batsmen to have as much as the strike as possible and Bhajji did exactly that. To me, that is ‘shielding’, plain and simple. But in your world, its perfectly ok for him to simply turn the strike over in the first ball of every over when the field is out and have the tail-ender face the rest of the over, is it not? And please, for the one final time, don’t bring up Sydney 2008 as the model example. The same Sachin, shielded the same Ishant against a much inferior bowling attack in Bangladesh, only earlier this year. By your logic, that should have destroyed Ishant’s confidence right? I am not going to regurgitate the old arguments over and over again, but what I find mildly amusing is that conviction with which the pro ‘don’t shield your tail-ender’ folks seem to believe their strategy is far and away, the most effective way to go about the situation, when we have contrasting results with both sets of strategies.