5 Instances when explosive batsmen played cautious knocks

Back in the 1970s to 1990s, batting was a tad arduous and run-making wasn’t an easy task by any means. The batsmen had to ground tirelessly to get their teams off to decent scores. These days, targets of even 350 don’t seem to be on the safe side. Bowlers have very little room for errors and spraying the ball around can be costly.

In the last few years, plenty of power-hitters have emerged. Achieving a strike-rate over 100 isn’t alike a climb to the mountain top. The boom of T20 cricket in the last couple of decades has also given rise to many brutal strikers of the cricket leather.

Nevertheless, at times even they had to pay respect to the gravity of the situation. Instead of going for the ambitious and booming shots, they resorted to the defensive mode to get their innings going.

In the article, let’s take a look at five slow knocks from explosive batsmen: –

1. David Warner- 100 off 140 against Sri Lanka, 2012

David Warner has the game to demotivate oppositions within a blink of an eye. The southpaw plays at a strike-rate of 95.76 in ODIs and is a dangerous customer to deal with. But in March 2012, he played a knock, which may not have exhibited his fluent self.

At the Adelaide Oval, Warner scored 100 runs off 140 balls with four fours and one six. He was there in the middle until the 46th over. He tried hard for over three hours before Lasith Malinga got him caught in the deep.

In the end, it was owing to Michael Clarke’s 91-ball 117 that the Aussies managed to reach 271 for six. But it wasn’t enough as the Lankans tracked down the target with eight wickets and 34 balls to spare. Warner’s knock was a tad on the strange side as the home team never lost wickets in heaps.