Should David Warner's switch hit be banned?
David Warner's switch hit against India the other night
Should David Warner's switch hit be banned? Hmm depends which way you look at it, is it unfair to the bowlers? Does it provide great entertainment for the crowd? Of course it does, and it has sparked debate everywhere whether the shot should be banned or not in cricket.
First of all we have to congratulate Dave Warner on the shot itself! To accomplish something like that is amazing, there is only one other man in the world that managed to pull it off as good as Warner and that was Kevin Pietersen. In that game Pietersen hit 2 sixes batting left handed where Warner in this case has done it right handed. David Hussey states that Warner regulary practises that shot in the nets and his switch hitting ability should be celebrated not banned. The shot would be amazingly hard to pull off time and time again so I don't believe that we are going to be seeing many batsmen attempting this shot.
Now the bowlers of course are going to feel that this is unfair and should be banned, in many cases they are right with the bowler having to tell the batsmen which side of the wicket they are bowling from and what hand they are going to use to bowl with where as with switch-hitting it is allowing the batsmen to change his/her stance which is something the bowler does not have access too.
On the batsmen's side of the argument however they will state that if the bowlers gets hit for six, they can still come back and bowl multiple more balls where as the batsmen if they make a mistake they are out. Another arugment against the bowlers is that even though they have to tell the batsmen and the umpire which side of the wicket they are bowling from and what arm they are using to bowl the ball with, they are allowed to cover up the ball when they are running in which doesn't allow the batsmen to see what they are going to bowl technically. This is almost the same as the switch-hit except the switch-hit has a high risk to reward ratio and only batsmen with the amazing talent of the David Warner's and the Kevin Pietersen's will be able to pull the switch hit off.
This debate is likely to go on for a while yet, well at least when David Warner is creaming the switch hit's right handed into the stands, people will have there differing opinions about the matter, but at the end of the day, it is great entertainment for the crowd and people want to pay money to see the likes of David Warner playing the switch-hit shot. When the ICC think about it, the money earned off this type of shot could be huge.
I truely hope that the switch hit will not get banned as I am a big fan of the switch hit and of David Warner, the bowlers will likely adapt to the switch-hit as they have done with everything else back in time, it will create an interesting little sub-plot when David Warner tries it again.
