In praise of the forward defensive

Nobody arrives at a net wanting to work on their defence. It is the shot you play while you wait for the shots you enjoy, and at some point in the last twenty years it stopped being taught with any conviction at all.

You can see the result on any Saturday. A new ball, a bit of sideways movement, and a top order that has three ways of scoring and no way of surviving.

It is a scoring shot with a long delay

A good forward defensive does two things at once. It keeps the ball out, obviously. It also tells the bowler that the next twenty minutes are going to cost them, and bowlers get bored and start looking for something else. That something else is usually a bit shorter or a bit wider, and now you have a run.

The batters who make big scores at club level are not the ones with the widest range. They are the ones who can leave the first hour alone and still be there when the shine goes and the bowler's third spell is a change bowler.

What most people get wrong

The front foot goes across as much as forward. Everyone knows this and half the players in your side still push the foot straight down the pitch, which opens the gate and puts the pad in front of the stumps.

The bat comes down from the top and stays close to the pad. A defensive played with the hands away from the body is just a catching practice for second slip with extra steps.

Soft hands. The ball should die at the face and drop. If your defensive shots are travelling to mid off, you are pushing at it, and the day the ball moves a fraction you will edge it.

The head goes over the ball. Not near it. Over it. Everything else in the shot follows the head, and a head that has fallen away to the leg side is the reason for most of the edges in your averages.

How to practise something this dull

Ten deliveries at the start of every net where the only acceptable outcome is the ball dropping dead in front of you. No runs, no rotation, nothing. If it goes past the bowler you played it too hard.

Then a rule for the middle: the first three balls of any new bowler get defended, whatever they are. It is artificial and it will annoy you, and it will also stop the dismissal that has ended a quarter of your innings for the last five years.