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Rob Houwing, Sport24 chief writer
Cape Town – There must be a pretty good chance that South African-born Jonathan Trott will be one of the individual stars of the looming World Cup – despite possessing a strange “impediment” in the run-accumulation department.
Trott’s two centuries and a further innings of 84 not out represented one of few high points to England’s 6-1 humiliation in the recent one-day international series in Australia, which took a bit of the gloss off their Ashes retention.
But the Capetonian, a former Boland and Western Province batsman, also used that seven-match series to cement his budding reputation for keeping the ball “on the deck” to a peculiarly stubborn degree.
Trott, you see, just doesn’t deal in sixes.
His star is very much on the rise in both the Test and ODI codes, with 1600 runs in five-day competition from 18 appearances at an average of 61.53, and 858 runs from 18 ODIs at 53.62 and a perfectly acceptable strike rate of 77.57.
Yet he has achieved these impressive figures without the aid of even a solitary six: his boundaries consist of 177 fours in Tests and 66 in ODIs.
It is an unusual state of affairs, and if there are those who might suggest he is missing an essential trick - especially in the more urgent ODI format - you are likely to find others retorting that his shyness in “maximums” hasn’t done him any harm at all.
The 29-year-old right-hander appears to be a pretty classical accumulator at the crease: as TV commentator Mark Nicholas observed during England’s lengthy tour Down Under, “he (Trott) just builds and builds ...”
It will be interesting to see whether Trott changes his approach on the Subcontinent shortly, where totals around or even well in excess of 300 ought to be a reasonably common World Cup characteristic and consistent boundary-seeking therefore more necessary than elsewhere in the world.
But he may also take the hard-to-dispute view that if his game ain’t broke, don’t fix it ...
*By comparison, of the likely top four in the Proteas’ World Cup batting order, Graeme Smith has hit 709 fours and 38 sixes in 165 ODIs, Hashim Amla is 218-11 (42 ODIs), Jacques Kallis 862-129 (307 ODIs) and AB de Villiers 396-69 (114 ODIs).
Cape Town – There must be a pretty good chance that South African-born Jonathan Trott will be one of the individual stars of the looming World Cup – despite possessing a strange “impediment” in the run-accumulation department.
Trott’s two centuries and a further innings of 84 not out represented one of few high points to England’s 6-1 humiliation in the recent one-day international series in Australia, which took a bit of the gloss off their Ashes retention.
But the Capetonian, a former Boland and Western Province batsman, also used that seven-match series to cement his budding reputation for keeping the ball “on the deck” to a peculiarly stubborn degree.
Trott, you see, just doesn’t deal in sixes.
His star is very much on the rise in both the Test and ODI codes, with 1600 runs in five-day competition from 18 appearances at an average of 61.53, and 858 runs from 18 ODIs at 53.62 and a perfectly acceptable strike rate of 77.57.
Yet he has achieved these impressive figures without the aid of even a solitary six: his boundaries consist of 177 fours in Tests and 66 in ODIs.
It is an unusual state of affairs, and if there are those who might suggest he is missing an essential trick - especially in the more urgent ODI format - you are likely to find others retorting that his shyness in “maximums” hasn’t done him any harm at all.
The 29-year-old right-hander appears to be a pretty classical accumulator at the crease: as TV commentator Mark Nicholas observed during England’s lengthy tour Down Under, “he (Trott) just builds and builds ...”
It will be interesting to see whether Trott changes his approach on the Subcontinent shortly, where totals around or even well in excess of 300 ought to be a reasonably common World Cup characteristic and consistent boundary-seeking therefore more necessary than elsewhere in the world.
But he may also take the hard-to-dispute view that if his game ain’t broke, don’t fix it ...
*By comparison, of the likely top four in the Proteas’ World Cup batting order, Graeme Smith has hit 709 fours and 38 sixes in 165 ODIs, Hashim Amla is 218-11 (42 ODIs), Jacques Kallis 862-129 (307 ODIs) and AB de Villiers 396-69 (114 ODIs).
