Small is beautiful

By A. C. de Silva

CRICKET: It is very often said that batting is a small man's game.

Take for example some of the top names in Australian batting in the recent past. It is hard to think of another Australian batting line-up in recent times as short as this one. Bruce Laird was 170 cm (5ft 7 inches), Graeme Wood 176 cm (5ft. 9 inches), Allan Border 175 cm (5 ft 9 inches) and Rod Marsh 173 cm (5 ft 8 inches).

Only Greg Chappel who is 188 cm (6ft 2 inches) could be considered tall.

The Pakistani batsmen too, were of small to medium height. Javed Miandad, the best of them, was 171 cm tall, not quite (5ft 8 inches).

The pre-eminence of short men is even more striking if you cast your mind back to outstanding Australian batsmen of former years: Doug Walters, Neil Harvey, Lindsay Hassett, Sir Donald Bradman, Stan McCabe, Charlie Macartney and Syd Gregory are, or were, shorter then medium height.

Bradman's height, incidentally, is a matter of contention. It was generally quoted at 172 cm (5ft 8 inches), but Ray Robinson who knew most things about Bradman, used to insist it was 5ft 6 3/4 inches.

The most obvious reason for all of this is that short batsmen are lighter and therefore more nimble, with the result that their footwork is sharper.

Neil Harvey thinks that from this stems all the other differences evident between short and tall batsmen.

Dr. Gerry Jones of the Human Movement and Recreation Studies Department at the University of Western Australia, believes that there is a more elementary reason. He says that short men are capable of more rapid movement because their limbs travel through a smaller are and they generally have a higher ratio of strength to weight.

For this reason, he says, tall batsmen rarely play the stroke probably requiring the most rapid movement of all - the pull shot.

As a corollary to this, tall batsmen favour the drive. They do not cut or hook early nearly as often as shorter men, partly because, for them, the ball does not get up to a comfortable height so often.

Greg Chappell's ability for hitting in front of the wicket, in contrast with his shorter teammates, is clear enough.

Short batsmen have one other important advantage - they can get out of the way of bouncers more easily.

Against the easy-paced Pakistani attack at that time, this was really not an advantage at all but, as Laird probably knew better than anyone else.