5 batsmen with unorthodox techniques who crafted great careers

When you talk about unorthodox cricketers, a lot of spinners, Saeed Ajmal and Sunil Narine being a couple, come to mind instantly. When it comes to batsmen, Tillakaratne Dilshan has been known to invent quite a few shots of his own, his most innovative one being the ‘Dil Scoop’, a delightful shot to watch, wherein he bends down and manoeuvres the ball over his own head and behind the wicket-keeper for four. You just can’t have a fielder for that kind of a shot.Matthew Hayden created a sensation with the use of the ‘Mongoose Bat’ which featured a bigger handle and a smaller blade that made pinch-hitting easier. Chris Gayle is another player who is unconventional, not so much in the way he plays but in the way he thinks and approaches a game. For him, there is no situation where he cannot contemplate hitting the ball out of the park, which explains how he can do it so often.Here are five batsmen who don’t adhere to the textbook style of batting, but have managed to craft great careers:  

#1 Kevin Pietersen

Kevin Pietersen may no longer be part of the national team, but it will not be wrong to say that he was the best and most destructive English batsman while he was part of their line-up. Perhaps Andrew Flintoff came close to matching how dangerous he was, but that was about it.

Pietersen plundered bowling attacks at will, and whenever he was in the middle batting, the match was most certainly going England’s way.

He is perhaps the most unconventional batsman of the modern era. Credited with the invention of the switch hit, he was the centre of a lot of debate and controversy after he first used it in a game on whether it was a legitimate shot.

Nevertheless, it became an accepted shot thereafter, and he used it in a number of games to fox the bowlers, and it was a big hit in the IPL as well. He was able to get good success out of this, and even hit bowlers like Muttiah Muralitharan for six with this technique.

He was never afraid to dance down the wicket and try his shots. In fact, it was a regular habit with him. He got a majority of his runs on the on-side. Even deliveries bowled outside the off-stump would be whacked through mid-wicket if he so desired.

He was adjudged Man of the Tournament in the World T20 that England won in 2010. Although the ECB ended his term as a player at the beginning of this year, he has had a glorious run on the field, and English supporters would surely want him to return, controversy or no controversy.

He has scored 8,181 Test runs in 181 innings at 47.28 and 4,440 ODI runs in 125 innings at 40.73. In T20s, he has 2951 runs against his name at a strike rate of 132.45.