Shreyas Iyer’s short ball problem and Shubman Gill’s front foot issues: How old problems resurfaced against England | Cricket-world-cup News

Shubman Gill’s slow weight transfer onto the front foot, and Shreyas Iyer’s problem against short balls are artefacts from the past, that still keep bleeding in every now and then.
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Gill has just one problem with his batting: that slow weight transfer onto the front foot. He has been dismissed James Anderson, Kagiso Rabada, Kyle Jamieson, and Mohammad Shami (in the IPL) in the past. Now, it was turn for Chris Woakes, who got the ball to shape in through the bat-and-pad gap.
It stems from his childhood training on cement tracks. On cement, the backfoot becomes an instinctive play, and the front foot something to be worked on. Batting is about transferring weight (forward or back) and still have the balance and skill to play under the eyes.  Even when the ball is relatively full, Gill doesn’t move forward that much. He can occasionally push his hands at the ball without actually transferring his weight to the pacers.

He is aware of the issue but understandably doesn’t want to upset the whole apple cart to fix this issue. This is how he put it to this newspaper.
“There are one or two important elements. Like your shoulder should be aligned towards the ball, you should be a little side-on while playing, you should be in a good position even if your feet are not moving that well. If you are positioned well in relation to the ball, you will manage… When we play in India, there isn’t that much bounce. Most deliveries stay low. That (reducing the shuffle) was one adjustment I made after talking to our batting coach. I felt I should restrict my initial movement a bit. The ball doesn’t swing much in India either, so the lesser the movement in your body, the better it will be for you,” Gill had told The Indian Express.
Shreyas Iyer against short balls
Shreyas can get into awkward tangles against the pacy short balls. He will get on to his front foot and try to manufacture the pull from that position – and his bat will either end up facing the sky or the bat swing won’t be smooth. He has talked about in the past being affected the noise surrounding it.Most Read
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“That (the short ball issue) is just what the commentators talk about. And off-the-field guys kept saying it was an issue. It had gone into my head at one point. But if you see, if I can leave or keep it down, I definitely don’t have a problem. Runs wouldn’t come (against short balls); that was the situation. Obviously bowlers started to target when I came to bat. It does play in batsmen’s mind when people from outside talk about the problem and it’s important as a player to turn a deaf ear to them. The rest will take care of itself. At the end of the day, ignorance is bliss.”
He doesn’t duck or sway against the bouncers. And his effort to keep the ball down can also be a touch awkward – with the bat face neither here nor there as he tries to roll his wrs over the ball but wouldn’t quite manage that.

In this game against England, the ball didn’t climb that high, but again he wasn’t in great position and unsurprisingly he miscued the pull.

England have been at him with this ploy for a while now. Last December in a Test in England, his arrival at the crease had made England’s coach Brendon McCullum active in the dressing room balcony. McCullum flicked his neck with his right hand; the ominous visual looked straight out of a gangster move but the instruction from the England coach to his players was to start chin music, with a couple of close catchers on the leg side. A short ball angling across the body from James Anderson had accounted for the Indian middle-order batsman in the first innings. In the second innings, too they had softened him up with short balls before he pulled a short one straight to midwicket. So it wasn’t a surprise to see them try the short-ball again at him in Lucknow.