Is Harry Brook pathetically out of form? We have our answers for that? Maybe it’s not too hard to answer that one.
Is Harry Brook not going to hit back any form, whatsoever, in what’s to follow? Truth be told, none of us can offer an accurate answer for we don’t deal with clairvoyance.
There’ve been all sorts of questions concerning the fantastic batting talent in the armoury of Sunrisers Hyderabad but frankly, few have put their fingers on a question that, beyond the space of big words or biases, seems apt in the right hander’s case.
And it’s that- Whatever that’s happening with Harry Brook, is it normal or a rather strange occurrence?
Frankly, the likes of an Eoin Morgan would relate to the Harry Brook predicament knowing that he too had been in that space and more specifically, earlier on in his Indian Premier League stint.
The kind of cricketing culture that Brook has grown up amid is almost the same as that on Morgan’s end.
Pitches back in England and notably, even a New Zealand have swing and bounce, where seamers have great carry and the ball, more often than not, comes nicely on to the bat.
So when Brooks smashed- not collected- those magnificent 329 runs in New Zealand, scoring dazzling knocks such as that 186 that actually came of merely 176 deliveries, there was little doubt why he garnered much praise.
Whether the Basin Reserve or Bay Oval, the free scoring batsman, who loves to make the bat speak for him, wasn’t troubled by the slowness of the pitch or the lack of carry.
But playing in the Indian sub continent where there’s much turn and perhaps a bit more slowness than what a free flowing batter would expect appears to have come up as a question in Brooke’s book for which there aren’t readily available answers.
It’s much like that question you don’t necessarily expect will strike you in an exam, but when it does, it tends to leave you befuddled.
The same happened to Eoin Morgan, who, lest we forget, could only manage 35 runs from his first six IPL outings. That’s in 2010. The next year, whilst some improvement came about, it wasn’t a massive one; the leftie would conjure 137 runs from 12 outings.
His basic average would appear mediocre standing a touch above 13.
But despite all of that and the obvious evidence carried by stats, the Harry Brook case in the IPL is a rather startling question.
The game has changed and rather promisingly for batters today than where it was back in 2010.
Contemporary batters, we would like to think, grow up batting a bit more aggressively. There’s lesser restraint and little holding back, perhaps the classic IPL template.
But what’s more important to note is that there’s a sense of quicker adaptation to a game situation, this particularly being the era of slam bam T20 cricket where given so little time, you just sort of get on with your game.
There again, what hasn’t quite appeared to so many of us fans dazed and confused about what has gone wrong with Harry Brook is that maybe there are battere who don’t quite adapt right at the drop of a hat.
And that, there’ll always be some- maybe Brook is a classic case- who will take more time to get going than the rest.
Which is why when the same lad who thrashed bowlers on his way to that fantastical unbeaten 100 just scores a 7, 18 and 9 in the games (that follow) is disappointing SRH and young fans more than it should.
Not that the disappointment isn’t called for, but trolling a capable right hander whose best days are certainly in front of him is a bit needless and unnecessary.
As a matter of fact, there’ve been several blazing batsmen who’ve scored all around the world but floundered here in India, one of which includes Brook’s own captain Brian Charles Lara.
You can see Lara’s domination of India (which still wasn’t as incessant as the Prince’s game against England and Australia) in the Caribbean vis-a-vis a very mediocre record of playing here in India.
That’s when things like injury management and workload management given there were two formats back then weren’t the big stress points.
More presumably, Harry Brook being out of form in a winning team for whom things were still working out well would’ve been a world of a difference when compared to the current woes for SRH.
Here’s a top order batsman, clearly the biggest talent scouted this season as also the most expensive purchase, who’s out of form for a team that isn’t winning.
Almost the bottom dwellers, SRH have just 4 points from 7 games so far and seem clearly out of sorts.
What further compounds their issues is that runs aren’t coming for Tripathi as well as he’d have liked and even the greatly talented Markram is struggling.
Surely, there’s trouble and endlessly so right now. But imagine the real struggle if this was the third season in a row for Harry Brook with the struggles against spin and on batting on slow, sluggish wickets even?
Wouldn’t that be much worse?