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On taking stride:

Question: Desmond, we heard Geoffrey Boycott a lot on TV and this is actually not on Mickey tape because he was an outstanding player and an outstanding coach of batting. And he always talks about the big stride. Well that seems very difficult to me, when I coached young people myself, to have them in a back position to make a big stride forward seems awkward. If you look at players like Majid Khan, Sunil Gavaskar, Barry Richards, I would say that weight transfers forms the more important part in their movements, back & forth.

Haynes: Ya! Mark I must agree with you, I think that if you got to look to especially with playing against someone who is very quick and you want to use both ends of the crease, you are going back and you want to cover the off-stump, it's going to very hard for you to get that front-foot so far down the wicket.

But I think , it's something that I learned a lot from Gordon Greenidge because when I first met Gordon that is opened the batting with Gordon, I was amazed to see Gordon Greenidge playing forward to Jeff Thomson because I found that was impossible, my theory was that I am going to play back to him and when he bowls full I am going to give it a hit, so I was like this.

And Gordon would say well, it's not there means it is there, I got to learn that. Then I went to play the World Series cricket and Dennis Lillee gave me two short balls and pitched one full, I am on my backfoot, out LBW.

So I went to the nets, I practiced, getting the weight, as you are talking about the weight transfers and I start going here with the intention to say that I am going to come out & get out

And you know, you might not get going far out but you can still be in a position from where you can get the bat out even if you are far enough from the wicket or not.

© Sharp Focus Ltd 1999


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