5 greatest players of the hook/pull shot

The short ball directed at the head of the batsmen is one of those deliveries that can often prove to be extremely disconcerting for batsmen when bowled by a genuinely quick bowler. Many batsmen are dismissed when they fail to get out of the way of the ball or defend against it.

However, batsmen, who are quick to judge the length of the ball, and who have lightning fast feet movement, can turn it into an advantage by playing the hook or the pull. Instead of ducking under the ball, these batsmen actually push the bowlers onto the back foot by attacking the short ball.

Needless, it is a skill that is possessed by a handful of batsmen and more often than not, they are regarded as some of the best batsmen in cricket history.

Here is a look at 5 of the best players of either of these shots:

#5 Gordon Greenidge

The West Indian team of the 1970s and 1980s is regarded as one of the finest cricket teams to have ever played the game. One of the most significant members of that team was their opening batsman, Gordon Greenidge.

He was an aggresive batsman, who believed in attacking the bowlers from the start, and although he had a superb defensive technique, his first instinct was to dominate the bowlers.

Against anything pitched marginally short and directed at his head or body, Greenidge used to be merciless, and more often than not, the pull or the hook used to be the shot of his choice.

Usually, the ball went to the boundary or cleared it, and what is more interesting is that he did not avoid playing these shots even when he played at the larger grounds in Australia. Greenidge did it for years and that too, against some of the fastest bowlers in the world.

4 Jacques Kallis

He is often regarded as the greatest all-rounder to have ever played the game. In addition to that, Jacques Kallis remains one of the finest batsmen in the history of cricket. His superb technique, the hunger for runs, and the strive for excellence in a career that lasted around 19 years (1995-2014) remains almost unparalleled.

While he had almost all the shots in the book and could play most of them in a near-perfect manner, he was a particularly superb player of the pull shot. His first instinct might have been to shoulder arms or sway out of the line, but when he realised that the ball was there to be hit, he did not let it go.

He was not a particularly compulsive hooker of the ball, but what made his pull shot particularly effective was that he rolled his wrists when he played the shot and kept it down. There was hardly any chance of the ball being in the air for too long.

#3 Sachin Tendulkar

Sachin Tendulkar was the best batsman in the world for the major part of his career and he was best known for having the ability to take on the best fast bowlers in the world on the quickest of pitches. The Indian legend's biggest gift was his penchant of picking up the length of the ball far earlier than most batsmen and he was capable of doing that even on the fastest of wickets.

Although Tendulkar rarely played the hook shot, despite being perfectly capable of playing it when he wanted, he was a monstrous player of the pull shot. Later on in his career, he did not play it as regularly, but during his peak years, the pull came out whenever the fast bowlers pitched anything even marginally short.

His superb record in the hotbeds of fast bowling like Australia and South Africa is another indication of the sort of mastery he had over the short ball.

#2 Viv Richards

The 'King' was possibly the most destructive batsman in cricket history and anyone who watched him bat always spoke about the swagger he had when he faced some of the world's quickest bowlers.

Viv Richards only wore a cap and believed that wearing a helmet was an admission of fear. That was the sort of level he operated in and hence, it was not a surprise that he was a savage player of the pull and the hook shot throughout the course of his career.

It seemed Richards took a short ball as a personal affront and his first instinct was to hook or pull, depending on the height the ball gained by the time it reached him. Some of the hooks almost always ended up over the boundary line, while the pulls were so hard hit that it is believed that fielders often avoided stopping them.

#1 Ricky Ponting

One thing that fast bowlers realised quite early in Ricky Ponting's career was that bowling short to him was the worst strategy in the world. Throughout the course of his stellar career that spanned 17 years (1995-2012), the right-hander was the best player of the hook and pull shots in the world, and definitely the best in the history of the game.

His backfoot play was something out of the ordinary and what made him great was that he not only punished deliveries that were pitched too short but even those that landed on the right length and were well directed.

The hooks and pulls were majestic to watch, and he also found the placement absolutely correct on most occasions. However, what made him a great player of those shots was the fact that when he had even committed himself on the front foot, he could alter his shot and play a crunching pull shot if he wanted to.