Litchfield: ‘I play the reverse-sweep whether or not it spins or not’
Phoebe Litchfield can do all of it. She takes gravity-defying flying catches as a behavior. In reality, India batter Jemimah Rodrigues, her team-mate at Northern Superchargers within the girls’s Hundred, joked that she does not need to be Litchfield’s pal anymore after one such blinder resulted in her dismissal. But Litchfield additionally bats stylishly and performs a imply reverse-sweep. It’s a shot that the bowlers nonetheless do not anticipate her to play, regardless of it being one in all her strengths. She displayed that stroke a number of instances in her maiden girls’s Hundred season final yr in addition to the WBBL previously few seasons. Those exploits led Gujarat Giants to splurge INR 1 crore (USD 120,000 approx) on her for WPL 2024.
Litchfield tried the reverse sweep towards Sneh Rana within the one-off Test in India final month however chopped on. However, that didn’t deter her as she exhibited the shot a number of instances throughout her chart-topping show in Australia’s clear sweep of the three-match ODI sequence towards India. None of the batters from both facet performed the reverse sweep within the ODIs as a lot as Litchfield did. She introduced it out on 12 events and scored 22; Alyssa Healy tried the reverse-sweep 4 instances, the next-most.
“I still play it no matter if it spins or not,” Litchfield stated of the reverse-sweep after her 119 on the Wankhede Stadium within the third ODI. “It’s more about the area of the ground I can access rather than [thinking] if it’s spinning, and then if it is spinning it’s probably a good option because it’s hard to play with a straight bat.”
Litchfield completed the ODIs – her first in India – with 260 runs, scoring two fifties and 100. But she additionally recognized a doable space to work on – the standard sweep. In every of the three video games, she fell whereas trying a sweep. She missed a slog sweep and was bowled by Rana within the opening recreation, feathered an edge trying the shot off Shreyanka Patil within the second, and top-edged a slog sweep in direction of cowl off Patil on Tuesday.
“I have got to work on the conventional sweep because it’s got me out every ODI innings hit so far. The reverse is a strength of mine and I practice it a lot on the nets and just work on my wrist speed. I think that’s an important factor of it. And just sort of controlling it. One of them went in the air close to [Pooja] Vastrakar [at backward point] today. It’s just all down to practice.”
But there was a part throughout her second ODI century the place she felt the stress. Healy and Ellyse Perry had been dismissed in comparatively fast succession and Patil was introduced on for a two-over spell. With close-in fielders in place, Patil stifled Beth Mooney earlier than dismissing her and Tahlia McGrath off successive deliveries.
Litchfield was on 91 off 88 balls when Healy was dismissed and crawled to 98 off 107 earlier than the Patil double-strike. She then performed a pristine drive to beat mid-off and obtained to her century off 109 balls.
“I thought I was going to bring it up with Pez [Perry] as a fairy tale,” she stated. “But it took me a long time to get to the hundred and it was nerve wracking to say the least. Then with the wickets falling around me it was a bit stressful. But I just stayed really calm. I probably scored each run in singles.”
Litchfield is barely 20, and is already being spoken about in the identical league as former Australia captains Meg Lanning and Belinda Clark – that she termed “huge honor”. If her first yr in worldwide cricket is something to go by, it will not be outlandish if Phoebe Litchfield is the identify that involves thoughts when speaking about the very best batters on this planet over the following 5 years.