If there's anything I'm going to leave with from England, it might be a pull shot: Travis Head

In the ongoing Ashes 2023 series, one thing that has remained constant from both sides has been the use of 'bouncer' tactics. Be it England or Australia, both have tried to dry out easy runs for the batters. Moreover, the barrage of bouncers have been used as a psychological weapon to rattle a set batter mentally.

However, there is another side to the lethal side of cricket. That part is the batter testing their mettle and coming out victorious as what is the ultimate test of Test cricket. When the opposition is trying to get an edge using bouncers, the batter shows the character to find a way to diffuse its effectiveness, thereby forcing the opposition to change their tactics. It is at this point. a batter faces the make-or-break moment. In the same vein, the Australian batter Travis Head shared his thoughts on how the tactic has been used against his team and how he coped with the bouncer ploy.

Head believes that irrespective of the results, one thing which he will cherish and take along after with him post the series conclusion is the fact that he has become a better player of the 'bouncer'. Furthermore, he revealed that even though he did prepare for this situation. But did not anticipate that England will keep darting bouncers for almost the whole day instead of a particular session or frame of time in the game. Hence, Head was able to play the pull shot better than he has done in the past so far and thanked the English side for making him a better player.

"I feel like if there's anything I'm going to leave with from England, it might be a pull shot. As the series has gone on, I have played it better. It's no doubt it's a challenging thing. It's foreign. There's not many periods we've seen in Test cricket, where it's just been 100 per cent short balls," Head was quoted as saying by The West Australian.

England need 224 runs with two days to spare to win the Headingley Test

Interestingly enough, when it comes to how Travis Head has fared so far against the bouncer ploy, once in every six innings the Australian has batted in, he was dismissed through the bouncer while having an average of 44.33 and a strike rate of 73.48, respectively. Moreover, in the ongoing Ashes Test series, out of 248 balls the Aussie middle-order attacking batter has faced, 70.7 percent of them have been delivered in the form of bouncers. 

In the ongoing third Ashes Test at Headingley, Travis Head played an important knock of 77 runs on Saturday, July 8, to keep the visitors in the game after Australia were jolted with a sudden collapse in their second innings. Shortly after his dismissal, England wrapped Australia on 224 to get the target of 251 runs to stay alive in the series. Thereafter, England finished the day with 27 runs on the board without losing any wickets. The hosts still require 224 runs more to win the Headingley Test.