As cricket has evolved over the years, the cricketers have come up with different strokes which couldn’t even be thought of in the past. The availability of helmets has also allowed the modern day cricketers to go for innovative strokes without worrying about hurting themselves.
Switch hit is one of those modern day strokes which have been in the game only for a few years; however more and more cricketers who are coming through the ranks are now adding this stroke to their repertoire.
Here are the 5 best players of switch hit:
#1 Kevin Pietersen:
Kevin Pietersen was the first player who started playing switch hit at the international level. It was different from reverse sweep in the way that Pietersen changed his grip while playing it and almost played it with a left-handed stance.
#2 David Warner:
Pietersen’s discovery of the switch hit was then copied by some other cricketers around the world as well and the Australian opener David Warner was one of them.
Warner is a power-player like Pietersen and can hit sixes down the ground, but just to play with the field placement of the opposition captain, he often tries the switch hit in white ball games and nails it most of the time.
#3 Colin Munro:
Colin Munro is another player who changes his stance and goes right-handed, particularly against the off spinners who take the ball away from him.
When Munro changes his stance, an off spinning delivery comes into him rather than going away which then allows him to play across the line of the ball without too much of risk.
In a group game of the T20 World Cup against India in 2016, Munro hit the Indian off spinner Ravichandran Ashwin for a six over point by changing his stance.
#4 AB de Villiers:
Although De Villiers has all the shots in the book, he rarely goes for the proper switch hit. Most of the time, he plays the reverse lap where he only changes the grip of his bat subtly, without changing his stance and hits the ball behind the stumps between the keeper and the short third man.
However, De Villiers plays the switch hit as well on occasions by completely changing his stance.
#5 Rishabh Pant:
The young Indian sensation Rishabh Pant is also a good player of switch hit. He has not played it a lot at the international level, but the left-hander has often shown while playing in the Indian Premier League (IPL) that he has good control over the switch hit.
