Quotes About Batting

One of the things that I miss the most about cricket and batting in particular is that meditation of cricket, that involvement of myself - mind, body and spirit - to delivering that one specific process, which is to execute a cricket shot. It is a beautiful feeling; it is very hard to replicate.

Our family business was operating batting cages. The pitching machine spit out the balls at lightning speed. Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax. Whitey Ford. 50 cents for 12 pitches. Of course, my mother ran the place, and I was her slave: selling candy, hosing down the street, and the most dreaded of all jobs, feeding the pitching machine with balls.

It is not my role to go out and do the power hitting. My job is to play my natural game.

There should be no more questions asked about India's number 4 batting slot. If someone has played on that position for a year then he has secured that spot. Good feeling about securing the number 4 spot.

I'm not too sure how it will go but I think whenever I do get the chance to bat I can just show what I can do and hopefully with a lot of performances I could squeeze my way up the order a bit.

I was nervous batting eighth, and I was nervous batting seventh.

At No 3 you have to take a bit more time to find your feet, but at No 5 you take much less time to get adjusted because you have already observed your openers, the No 3 and No 4 batsmen and you get a fair idea of how the wicket is playing.

When I was 12, I was taking batting practice with an aluminum bat at Tiger Stadium. I don't know where it landed exactly, but upper deck somewhere. Yeah, people were surprised.

I believe in my heart that the name of the game in baseball - from an offensive perspective - is getting on base and not making outs.

As an opening batsman, it's my responsibility to spend as much time in the middle as I can and try and get big scores in the first innings so that we don't have to bat in the second innings.

When you bat, you need to have a lot of patience. I started training for it from the age of eight or nine. So, I knew what I needed when I stepped on the field to bat.

It would be useless for any player to attempt to explain successful batting.

I have to thank batting coach Sanjay Bangar for providing valuable inputs. He gave me honest feedback about how poorly I was batting and what were the aspects I needed to focus on.

The majority of the time with two strikes I'll choke up on the bat a little bit to try to stay as short as possible. It doesn't always work out like that, but that's the goal.

What batsmen like me do for fitness is often a bit different to what bowlers like Jimmy Anderson or Stuart Broad do but everyone in the squad has a big focus on core strength. It is really important for batting, bowling and fielding. You need a strong core and spine so your movement isn't restricted out there.

When I was growing up, I played a lot of ten- and 12-over games, and I would bat in the middle order. I got only ten-odd balls to face, and I tried to score as much as I could. I applied the same approach in domestic and international cricket, and people were appreciating my strike rate being more than 80 or 90 in Test cricket.

Obviously, when I go in at No. 11 it stands to reason that we will have a better chance of scoring runs or batting out time if the batsman at the other end takes most of the strike. That's because, as my place in the order suggests, he is a better batsman than me.

In 50over cricket there are different ways of playing. It's not all about smacking it over the top. It's important someone bats through the innings. That would be one of the options for me.

Tillakaratne Dilshan is innovative and scores quickly, while Upul Tharanga is neat and well organised - and left handed.

I remember my father, when I was a kid, retiring me on 50. He never used to let me bat past 50. He'd say I had to retire to give the other kids an opportunity.

The Oval has always been a good batting track, and there's not much for the bowlers.

It isn't the shape of the designs or the points or the batting, it's the love you sew into your quilt that is your true legacy.

If you ask me the best bowler, then Wasim Akram was the best bowler because he had a lot of variety. Even when you were batting on 100 or 150, you're not very sure... He could still get you out. That was his forte.

All baseball fans can be divided into two groups: those who come to batting practice and the others. Only those in the first category have much chance of amounting to anything.