Typos in trigger-movement theories

Bengaluru: There’s this video on YouTube titled ‘Sachin Tendulkar’s debut’. The title, while enticing as a novelty, is incorrect. This is actually a clip of his third knock in a One-Day International cricket for India. 

One could pardon the transgression because Tendulkar had picked up a pair in his first two innings so, in effect, this innings is the first time anyone got to assess his batting. 

It’s three minutes and a few seconds of rose-tinted gold.

Date: March 6, 1989. Series: Rothmans Cup Triangular Series. Opposition: New Zealand. Venue: Basin Reserve (Wellington).

Tendulkar goes on to score 36 runs from 39 balls, including five fours, at a strike rate of 91.30.

A star may not have been born in that very moment, or during his Test debut against Pakistan a month prior, but you could see what the team and the management saw in him. 

The vim and vigour of his teens complemented a technical maturity well beyond his years. Better yet, he had the gumption to put aside his early failures, or the run out of Azhar, to go on the offensive against the Kiwis. 

Kapil puts his arms around the little boy every chance he gets, and then, just like that, Tendulkar is walking off the screen - head shaking, lips quivering, eyes averting - dismissed by Shane Thomson. 

If time travelling is your thing, do make time for the video. Also, if your purpose is to study technique, you may want to study Tendulkar’s feet more than anything else.

Contrary to what has been touted by many an expert for decades now, Tendulkar has little or no trigger movement in the few shots he plays in the short clip. 

Yes, he charges down the track preemptively and connects, but there is no initial movement. 

He’s about as steady as he can be until the bowler is about to land at the crease. At the point of release, Tendulkar’s bat is above his shoulder and his front foot is off the ground marginally, as if he’s coiled and about to spring into the shot. As the ball closes in on him, his front foot touches the ground in line with the ball and the bat comes down in one clean motion.

So, that’s Tendulkar at 16. Perhaps, he introduced a back-and-across later on in his life?

Well, yes and no but there were plenty of instances within a game when he didn’t have a trigger movement. 

In fact, a thesis paper published in 2016 looks at how Tendulkar would introduce trigger movements on demand, sometimes even inside the same over. If that impossibly intricate and tough-to-master sequence of micro-movements, isn’t a measure of Tendulkar’s genius, nothing is. 

But the bigger question is why does the ‘textbook’ insist that everyone must have a trigger movement when arguably the greatest batter of all time didn’t find the need for it? More specifically, does white-ball cricket need trigger movements? 

There have been quite a few batters who didn’t adhere to this manual and went on to have successful careers, Virender Sehwag among others. By and large, however, trigger movements were considered imperative for batting success. 

Fast forward to 2023, and the verity of that cricket-camp-edict doesn’t hold water.

There are plenty of batters in world cricket at the moment without any trigger movements. 

A great example of one is India’s Rinku Singh because not only is he dead-steady at the point of release, but he’s also scoring at an impressive strike rate by reacting instead of acting. 

If that isn’t testament enough, the likes of Virat Kohli and Travis Head were seen at ‘nets’ during the 50-over World Cup going through a stand-and-deliver routine, consciously eliminating any footwork. It didn’t last very long, but it has become a part of their warm-up.  

“I don’t have any trigger movement because I prefer staying still,” says Karnataka batter K Gowtham. “I did learn it but I realised there was no need for it. I was striking the ball better when I didn’t have any movement. Trigger movement is useful to get into good positions but it doesn’t always work, and so I chose to do away with it. Also, it makes my shotmaking better against bowlers who are quick.” 

Also, remember Glenn Maxwell’s double-century against Afghanistan in the World Cup?

It’s another matter to not have trigger movements, Maxwell didn’t even have his feet to rely on ‘footwork’. It was all in his hips, his shoulders and his wrists. It wasn’t pretty, but boy, was it effective. 

That innings looked more like a painful round of spasmodic golf than it did cricket, but that’s exactly what cricketers have been introducing into their game (not the painful or the spasmodic bit, of course) of late. 

There are plenty of batters using golf experts to help them gain better swing, meaning a cleaner point of contact, meaning a harder hit.

Surely, there are some issues with that technique because unlike in golf, in cricket the projectile is coming at you, instead of resting on a peg before becoming the projectile.

The late Bob Woolmer had said as far back as 1999 that the longer a batter is at the crease, the lesser the need for a trigger movement. 

It must be noted that Woolmer was an avid teacher of trigger movements, but he understood that cracking the complexity of his compound movement is not everyone’s cup of tea. 

He was from a ‘to each his own’ school of thought, and it worked wonders for pretty much every batter he ever worked with. 

So, now, as bowlers are more accurate with variations and the conditions are more myriad, predetermined movements can be detrimental to a batter’s position. Therefore, eliminating any extra movement and reacting to the ball as is, seems like a good solution to the problem of perfect contact. 

There is one little niggle though. Longevity. 

“See, not everyone, actually no one, can do what Tendulkar used to do with his trigger movements,” says biomechanics expert Ramji Srinivasan. “The only person I have seen change it up during overs is Steven Smith. The rest are usually sticking to what they think is right or have been taught for years.

“Frankly, trigger movements are good for you because you are in a better position to get to the pitch of the ball and you aren’t just swinging from a stationary position. Yes, you have better head position, but as you get older, your hands and your eyes won’t coordinate quite as efficiently, even if trained, and so you won’t be able to get to the pitch of the ball as well as you should.”

Ramji’s assessment summarises Sehwag’s career succinctly. 

While a young Sehwag was a bolted cannon, flinging his hands faster than most brains can process information, the older version couldn’t do the same. 

Sehwag’s greatest asset - stability - eventually became his greatest weakness because his lack of trigger movement meant he couldn’t get his timing right. Besides his waning eyesight, his shoulders gave up on him, meaning he was reaching for the ball desperately.  

Still, he ended up playing for close to 15 years and finished up with over 8000 runs in white-ball cricket. 

While that’s reason enough to adopt a see-ball-hit-ball-without-feet approach, in an ideal scenario, you should have all the basics in the bag, and be flexible with it. 

But, to suggest that having a trigger movement guarantees success is uninformed.