KL Rahul makes the cut shot relevant in T20s | Ipl News

It’s a glorious exception. Even the most restrained batsmen are prone to some theatrics when they late-cut. Rahul Dravid, one of its eminent exponents, enacted a synchronised dance routine when he unfurled those crunching cuts. The initial forward press, the high-elbow jutting out, the swift shift to the back foot, the sinuous arching of the upper body to manufacture the room, knees bending and rising with the ball, the bat flapping in his flourish.

Mahela Jayawadene made it look like a trick of the eye, like a magician performing the vanishing act. He paint-brushed it with minimal back-lift and follow-through, just dropping his bat on it, no ounce of control wasted in an unnecessary follow-through when playing behind point. Brian Lara rendered it a touch of graceful violence. Rahul makes it look so simple that he paints it as routine. It is not a shot of rage or bravado, but one born from calm.

Multiple replays though reveal the mastery and artfulness of the shot. The premise is simple but the execution far less so. Take the late-cut, which was squarer than the standard ones, off Josh Hazlewood during his magnificent 93 not out against Royal Challengers Bangalore. After the trigger movement, a back and across shift than a shuffle, he waited for the ball with the monkish patience.

The ball landed on the shorter frequency of the good-length bandwidth and shaped away just a touch, hovering around the fifth-sixth stump line. The back-and-across glide meant it was closer for him to free his arms and cut, as conventional wisdom goes.

Good batsmen would have been inclined to steer it through third man, the better ones would have looked to slice it aerially behind point. But Rahul sees the ball the way he wants to see it, measures space with his own metrics. As the ball rose, he opened up his body ever so slightly, moved the back leg across a wee bit and swirled the bat almost after it had passed him. It’s a delightful symmetry of balance, smooth transfer of weight and dexterous hands, a stroke he made look as effortless as picking a piece of paper from the floor. Delicious was the speed of mind and bat when he rode the bounce and swirled his wrists over it.
Defusing the risks

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He defused the inherent risks of executing the shot against a tall bowler, armed with a heavy ball on a surface where the odd ball had stopped. It was perhaps a conventional cut in the guise of a late cut. It whistled past where a normal cut could have mostly, behind point and square of the third man. Late cuts are designed to traverse finer routes.

But Rahul does not spare any ball that is even semi cuttable. For there are few divine cutters of the ball around as Rahul. The cut, which could be as savage as silken, has lost some of its grandeur in the T20 era. Most batsmen employ the improvised version of it, the more rewarding and thrilling upper cut. Or they slice and slap the ball in front of the point. Or merely throw their hands at the ball. The more daring ones even reverse pull it. As did Rahul himself towards the end of the innings.

In Rahul, thus, the cut has discovered an apostle in T20s, reviving and making it relevant again. It’s still an important weapon in Test cricket, indispensable on hard, fast and bouncy surfaces of Australia and South Africa. But in the shortest form, it’s not quite an extinct shot, but one that has been repackaged into more profitable variations. Like bell bottom trousers in the skinny fit era.

But Rahul has reasserted the full scope of having an array of cuts. The space between backward point and third man is an under-utilised run-scoring area. Partly because, piercing the gap requires a high level of finesse and self-belief. And chiefly because, it’s not an area power-hitting hulks target. In the boundary-stopping juggle, captains and bowlers leave the space largely unmanned.

Such strokes distort bowlers. They could swallow their pride when pulled emphatically — like Rahul did the previous ball. They could resign to the batsman’s superiority when he cover-drives him. But late cuts, authored without frills, drive them to frigid despair. Hazlewood, a cross-format veteran, resembled a somnambulist.

Two balls later, he displayed the regular cut for a double. Then he stopped cutting altogether. Rahul is so gifted a batsman that he doesn’t feel necessitated to cut or late cut every other ball he faces. But when he decides, it is quite a sight. And worth the wait, for he strips it off its elusiveness and exoticism.