Perth [Australia], November 19 (ANI): Australian wicketkeeper Alex Carey revealed the ‘slight’ technical modification he imposed in his batting stance as the secret which has allowed him to thrive in red-ball cricket before the five Tests against India.
Carey will head into the upcoming Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) as the top run-getter in the first four rounds of the Sheffield Shield season.
With his fiery form, the southpaw has garnered 452 at an average of 90.4, including two centuries. His sublime statistics become more emphatic as he sits at the top after playing one less game than second-placed Hilton Cartwright.
The sudden change in Carey’s rollicking start to the season comes down to two reasons. The first one is a prolonged break he had from competitive cricket.
The second reason is the technical change he put into effect by holding the bat slightly higher upon the bowler’s release, allowing him more time to execute his strokeplay with power and accuracy.
“It’s only slight, but at the moment, it feels like I’m in a good position and reacting pretty well to the ball. You play and play and play, you don’t really get a chance to work on too many things,” Carey explained after Australia’s first team training session, as quoted from cricket.com.au.
“Not having games coming up for a while, I’ve just mucked around a little bit with my hands and found something that felt good and sort of ran with that. I just got my hands up a little bit higher, the bat up to the sky and from there, just try to react. It did feel good pretty much straight away, so didn’t have to search too much,” he added.
Carey will be looking forward to extending his rich vein of form in the upcoming BGT series against India, beginning on Friday in Perth.
Australia squad for the first Test: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Nathan McSweeney, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc.
India’s squad for Border-Gavaskar Series: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammad Shami, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Ravindra Jadeja, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Sarfaraz Khan, Virat Kohli, Prasidh Krishna, Rishabh Pant (wk), KL Rahul, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Siraj, Washington Sundar. (ANI)
