Martin Crowe - interesting points

Extracted from a Cricinfo interview
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Who are the best batsmen you've seen when it comes to picking up the ball
early?

The two best I saw were Greg Chappell - he was a stylist - and Viv Richards -
he was a powerhouse. They had wonderful strengths and powers of concentration
and belief.


There were players that I liked to watch - David Gower, Mark Waugh. These were
the players who just stroked the ball, but were not necessarily so successful.
Sometimes they would come across as a bit lazy, perhaps, but they just had a
style that was nice to watch.


Who were the bowlers you struggled to pick?

The two bowlers that I never really picked very well at all were Jeff Thomson
and Michael Holding.


Holding, just for his change of pace. He could bowl 100mph or 70mph with the
same beautiful, classical action. He was, I think, one of the first to develop
a lot of different types of deliveries without discerningly changing his
action. It's very scary when you know he can bowl at 100mph and you are coming
forward to a slow outswinger, because he is deliberately doing that. He is
getting you forward, and you are thinking about that fast one. He was a very
thoughtful, intelligent bowler.


Thomson was just a freak - a very unique action. You never really saw it.


I have a quote from Thommo on the first time he bowled at you. "I knocked his
helmet straight off his head. It went to pieces and blood came out ... I
thought it was brains coming out. I think he was pretty happy to be alive!" Do
you remember that?
(Laughs) Bruce Laird, at short leg, was the only man in front of the wicket. I
was pretty much just out of school. Wearing a helmet was a new experience -
let alone using a chin-strap. So the helmet just sat on my head without a
chin-strap. I never really saw the ball. I had never faced anything remotely
so quick. The helmet kept flying off and Bruce Laird kept going after it to
get it!


There is one other bowler that I had trouble picking up. The guy who got me
the most times in Tests [six] was Phil Defreitas. He had an action that was
kind of delayed, which threw me a little bit.


In 1984 at Taunton you had a frightening experience facing Andy Roberts,
didn't you?

Oh yeah, it did frighten the death out of me. Roberts was bowling outswingers
off 14 paces and he was just snicking guys out at the other end. When I got on
strike, I treated him like I was playing [Richard] Hadlee in the nets. I would
leave everything outside off stump, wait till he bowled at me before I clipped
him for one or two, and not look to upset him. Once I was in for an hour and a
half, he started to use his bouncers - he had two differently paced ones - and
he also used the crease amazingly well. If he wanted to hit you, he could, at
will. And he did. He hit me four or five times in the ribs.


He bowled me two bouncers in a row at one point, so I charged him and hit him
back over his head for a six. That was it. It was game on. I remember Peter
Willey at gully going "Oh dear ... that was very silly of you." Roberts warned
me about what was coming. "You've got to watch now, be careful." And he hurled
two beamers at my head! I could see the whites of his eyes and I remembered
what I had read about his anger. He taught me a big lesson about facing West
Indies. I never faced anyone so intimidating.


How do you use that fear as a batsman? Sandeep Patil, the Indian batsman, once
said that it was fear that pushed him to attack the fast bowlers.
I just worked out intellectually that to get on to the back foot - you needed
to do that at Test level, particularly in that era - you had to be on the
front foot. You had to be able to go back quickly, and a long way, to give
yourself time to play it under your nose. So I got more on the front foot and
more towards the bowler, the faster he bowled. I gave up going back and
across. I couldn't do that. I just wanted to remain still, go on the front
foot and press back.


My motive was to survive and wear them down if I could. You sense that they
can't just keep on going forever. Even if there are four of them, there will
be a time when they are in their second or third spells where they will not be
as fast and menacing, and you can attack them a bit more.


Speaking of Akram, he is on record saying you were the best batsman against
reverse swing that he had ever seen. You would bat with a minimal back-lift,
which was very crucial there. How did that develop?
The minimal back-lift came about because of playing in New Zealand. To survive
on our wickets, I learnt that I couldn't afford to have a big back-lift. I had
to have a very light bat and get behind the line and make sure I was meeting
the ball full face. I couldn't hit through the covers as I would in Adelaide
or the MCG, which I enjoyed when I went to Australia. At Lancaster Park or the
Basin Reserve or Eden Park you just couldn't afford to do that.


Talk us through those battles against Wasim and Waqar Younis in that 1990-91
Test series in Pakistan. Did you prepare in advance to tackle the reverse
swing?

We had never heard of reverse swing before that. There was, of course, a lot
of ball-tampering. It was happening after five overs, and I would be in at 10
for 2 on an average. I just learnt to get the bat down at the last minute.


I always had slightly open hips - pretty classical stance - which meant the
body was never in the way. I knew where my off stump was, so reverse swing
going out was no problem. I had to concentrate for the one that came in,
attacking my pads and the stumps. I had to get bat on ball - particularly
since I had been quoted saying that I would rather have an Indian umpire than
a Pakistani umpire. The Pakistani umpires were out to get me, and they got me.
I batted nearly ten hours to get 108 [second Test, Lahore], so I didn't
frighten Wasim and Waqar - they just found it hard to get me out. I faced
Wasim a lot. I got a lot of not-outs against him, even in one-day cricket.


What is the first thing you look for when you are watching a batsman?
His eye and head position, his ability to stay balanced and therefore move off
both feet, and the ability to play late - see the ball early and play it late.
It's not easy to allow the ball to come all the way to you and hit it at the
last second as opposed to going hard at the ball. You have to do that - go
hard - sometimes when you want to hit the ball in the air. But I would say
head position, footwork, balance and playing late are the key.


What exactly does it mean, playing late and having extra time?
The greatest skill you have as a batsman is the ability to see the ball out of
the hand. Once you do that, you have created time and are gathering
information instinctively, processing it and making a decision on what to do.
If you see it early, you have time, but if you see it late, you tend to play
it early because you are searching for the ball. You are not decisive. This
differentiates a very good player from a not-so-good player. #