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To what extent did the reverse sweep and sweep alter the course of the Hyderabad Test? Quantitatively, not by much. Out of England’s first innings score of 246, 41 runs (just 16%) came from sweep, slog sweep and the reverse sweep. That increased to 24.5% in the second innings with 103 out of 420 runs. Bulk of the score in both innings was still made off the traditional shots. Like the drive, that accounted for 39% of the first innings score and 35% of the second. Which tells us the only reason the chatter is so focused on the reverse sweep is because England have successfully implemented it as a strategy to distract.
Zak Crawley indicated as much. “I think sweeping and reverse sweeping, when it’s spinning, is a good option. It takes the spin out of plan,” said the England opener here on Wednesday. This isn’t the first time a visiting team tried to sweep Indian spinners.
Back in the 1987 World Cup, Graham Gooch showed the way, sweeping Maninder Singh and Ravi Shastri in the semi-final. So emboldened was Nasser Hussain by the returns of the sweep shot during the tour of Pakistan in 2000 that he went ahead and even swept Muttiah Muralitharan in 2001. England won both those tours. At home, look no further than Damien Martyn who seized on every opportunity to sweep during Australia’s 2-1 win in 2004.
Joe Root was at the top of his sweeping game on the last tour when he scored a double hundred in the first Test but even he has wholeheartedly joined this growing English tribe looking to explore the reverse game.
“I think the reverse sweep is more common for us, because there’s just less field in there,” said Crawley. “They always seem to have two men out on the leg side. If they had two men out on the other side, we’d probably play the sweep…the reverse sweep comes probably just as naturally to us as the normal sweep.”
Also factor in the lack of bounce in India, making the reverse sweep a largely safe option. “The most important thing is you don’t think you are going to miss at all,” Root said in Hyderabad. “Have that mindset of committing to the shot and nailing it for four or one, or whatever. Pope (who scored 196 in the second innings) did it exceptionally well.”
Thing is, only 23 out of Pope’s 196 came off the reverse sweep. But a narrative had emerged by then—helped no less by the record that England had already zoomed up to second after Chennai 2021 as the only team to score so many runs off those shots in India since 2014—that England were all about the reverse sweep and sweep. They are not. England are still scoring more off conventional shots.
What they have done though is pick the right moments to derail India’s spinners with the right type of liberating shot. The adaptations were deft too. Not once were the scoop or the reverse scoop tried on a first day Hyderabad pitch that had decent pace—only sweep, reverse sweep and slog sweep, in that order. But on a Day 3 pitch that had slowed down enough, England weren’t afraid to try the reverse sweep (fetching 54 runs) more than the conventional sweep (25 runs). Not only did it mess up the lines of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, it also made way for more boundary balls in the length area that could be driven or eased off the backfoot.
This approach goes against the grain of Test batting as we knew, scoring runs by limiting risks. This is a new era though, where England are willing to risk a little to facilitate quicker runs off more conventional shots. “The mindset when I first came to England was to take your time and build a long innings and I didn’t think that came naturally to me and a few of the others,” said Crawley. “A lot of us play a bit better under this regime.”.
What next for England? Given how Root was seen exploring the switch hit—the legality of which has been a topic of fierce discussion on live television—at the nets on Wednesday, trust England to do anything it takes to stay one step ahead of India.
Which, considering Jadeja has been ruled out, could put India in a greater fix. Ashwin remains India’s best bet in terms of thinking out of the box but neither Axar Patel nor Kuldeep Yadav—primed to replace Jadeja—have that level of expertise. This being only the second Test in a five-match rubber, India could still stick to their guns. But given how quickly England wiped out the 190-run deficit in Hyderabad, there could always be a temptation to find that unscorable length or focus on a rough created outside the popping crease and ask England to take higher risk.
The other way around is to play England’s unconventional game of reverse shots, something most India batters were seen trying to perfect on Wednesday. It’s challenging work though. “It’s not something that you can just try,” said India batting coach Vikram Rathour. “You need to be prepared for that, you need to practice it. If you add more shots to your game it’s always beneficial, but we play in a traditional way. Our strength or strong areas are going straight and using our feet.”
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