Sadly at the moment he could in theory come in at number 11 and very few people would raise concerns about this decision.
How can a team carry a player in the hope that he will hit a six or two once every 10 matches.
And an even more sad situation is, that in the current scheme of things, he is the only one we have who has shown the ability of hitting a 6
once in every 10 games.
We don't have anyone on the bench, who can do even that.
Again, the problem is. we don't have the actual practice, routine and drills for power hitting. They do not exist in our coaching system.
What do we do?
We simply get one of the cheap side arm ball throwing hand held tool, and send halwa throw downs in the nets for batters to hit sixes.
So, now we have Asif who says he hits 150 sixes in the nets every day.
well ...... Of course he does!!
But on what? Throw down balls pitched in his hitting zone.
But in the actual game, no one gives him balls pitched in his zone (except for may be
once in every 10 games). The bowlers bowl him Yorkers, slow bouncers, off the crease wide and other deceptive deliveries - so he acts like a deer caught in the headlights. And rightly so, because he has no idea, and no practice, no ability and no developed skill to dispatch such deliveries.
T20 power hitting requires an altogether different kind of strength building and power power building drills, developing muscle flexibility, and sharpening of the hand eye coordination - so that, when you get balls pitched out of your comfort zone, you jump on them and dispatch 'em out of the park.
I already posted a video before but here it is again.
Please forward it to Asif Ali and ask him to look what's required from a power hitting batter as far as the practice goes - hitting 150 sixes on throw downs and halwa balls alone, won't cut it for him.
He might need someone to translate it for him very slowly so he understands what's going on - otherwise he will lose interest in watching it - simply because he won't know what the coach Julian Wood is explaining here.
