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“Learn from Matthew Hayden how to bat in India,” Allan Border asks Travis Head to focus on basics of playing spin and sweep the ball

Matthew Hayden had achieved tremendous success on his very first tour of India in 2001

The former Australian left-hander Allan Border, who was a good player of spin himself, has asked the fellow Australian left-hander Travis Head to take a leaf out of Matthew Hayden’s book if he has to score a lot of runs on the Indian pitches.

Travis Head seemed to have revived his test career last year during the Ashes, as he had piled on runs against a struggling England attack at home, but as the Australian team toured Pakistan and Sri Lanka where the conditions were drastically different and the ball turned quite a bit, Head struggled to put big scores on the board.

According to Allan Border, who was in a conversation with cricket.com.au, Travis Head needs to see how Matthew Hayden batted in India in 2001. There are a few basic things that a batsman needs to do while playing spin. First of all, use your feet because unless and until you use your feet and get to the pitch of the ball to either hit the ball or smother the spin, the bowler won’t be forced to change his length.

Batsmen don’t use their feet and defend these days: Allan Border

Border reckons that the modern-day batsmen don’t use their feet and defend. In Border’s opinion, a batsman doesn’t really need to hit the ball in the air after using his feet, he just needs to get to the pitch of the ball regularly to put the doubt in the bowler’s mind. And, then he has to use the sweep shot in between, something which Matthew Hayden did very well in India.

Allan Border insisted that the Australian team now has to tour the Asian countries a lot and if a player has been found out against spin, it’s a big chink in his armor. Every Australian batsman now has to learn how to deal with the turning ball, because Australia will be playing in those conditions a lot in the coming years.

Abhishek

I write a bit on cricket and I am more interested in technical and tactical side of the game, rather than bravado.
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