Eoin Morgan: how (and why) I play those amazing T20 shots
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When I started at Middlesex I was a conventional player. But I began to feel I needed other options. Limited-overs cricket is pushing the game forward and scores of 300 in 50-over cricket are par now. You can’t afford to be bogged down and scoring at a run a ball is no longer acceptable. In Twenty20, especially, you have to go at eight or nine an over at least.
I went through a period where I was getting a bit tied down and, not being the size of someone like Graeme Hick, I was looking at other scoring opportunities rather than just hitting over the top. That’s when I started to practise these sweeps.
I don’t think I’ve ever played out a maiden in Twenty20 cricket.
I started playing the sweep shots about three years ago. I hadn’t played much limited-overs cricket until then and Twenty20, in particular, has given players a real spur to improve. I’ve practised the shots hard – as much as I would practise the cut or a pull – and while I started out only playing them against the slow bowlers, I’ll play them against anyone now. I play them in the championship, too.
I think I played the reverse sweep twice during my last championship hundred, against Leicestershire.
You do have to premeditate the strokes, but the idea is that they feel like second nature. I don’t feel any need to play them just because people know I can. That’s the whole point of practice; it becomes instinctive. I still hit most of my sixes over mid-wicket with flicks off the seamers.
It’s great to put some pressure on the bowler; to make them change their plans; to get them wondering where they’re going to bowl next. Sometimes I’ll play the shot just to get them to change the field.
Often they’ll move mid-wicket to protect them from the reverse sweep and that opens up a gap. I like it when you can hear the fielding side becoming irritated. Bowlers hate the sweeps, too: they just don’t know where to bowl. It does make it very hard to set a field.
“The grip for the reverse-reverse sweep is the same as the grip for hurling, which is a sport I played when I was young, so I feel very comfortable with it. I read recently that the physical skills you learn between the ages of nine and 12 are hugely influential and that’s the period
I was playing hurling. I think it gave me strong and flexible wrists and an instinctive sense that the ball could be hit in different areas.”
A full T20 masterclass from Eoin, complete with sequence photography, appears in the July issue of SPIN, in shops June 5. Eoin will be blogging for Spin throughout the ICC World T20.
