BENGALURU: Tim David is one among a select batch of cricketers who have the hardest gig in the game today. Try to hit every ball for a four or a six. Called 'finishers', David's job is to maximise the death overs as much as possible.
In the current edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), he has elevated that into an art form. Across six matches so far, he has scored 173 off just 85 deliveries (12x4, 14x6).
Other batters and all frontline bowlers have some leeway, some margin of error. For David, the 30-year-old, the opportunity cost is four. That's how brutal the gig is for him.
Yet, he described it as 'fun'. It's a word he kept using multiple times during an interaction with select journalists on Wednesday, two days out from their game against Gujarat Titans.
Twenty-four hours after that interaction, the 6' 5" powerhouse dispatched one delivery from inside the net to the glass covering the press box. Doing some range-hitting, he employed his brute force, a combination of muscles, hip, hand-eye coordination and those extra long levers. Most of the shots landed on the seats in the stands. This was a glimpse into a training methodology of a finisher matchday minus one.
It also acted as a supplement piece to the way David spoke about his batting and how he approaches his role a day earlier. When he was just starting out, for example, he used to do some calculations before walking into a net session. Those would involve him setting random targets like needing 10 runs off two balls to win the game.
These days? "Fun," he said. "Maybe when I was younger or earlier in my career," he said. "To be honest, I just try to have fun when I go to training. I play cricket for 10-11 months of the year. I'm away from home a lot, so I try to enjoy training.
"It's about practising your basics. Making sure your technical structure is sound and obviously you need to have the power for hitting. So a lot of practising that and working on different ways you want to take the balls down."
Because the bowlers are constantly coming up with new variations, the Singapore-Australian knows he has to constantly keep innovating, coming up with new answers to stay ahead of the curve.
It's kind of why he continues to play the game. "I want to keep improving. So, it's hard to sit back and be happy because I'm driven, certainly to want to be more successful... I play because it's that feeling you get when you are out in the middle or when you win a game and when you are part of a good team, that's a pretty nice feeling. It helps you sleep at night."
Golf's swing mechanics
He also does study certain aspects of the swing mechanics involved in golf to become the best hitter he can be apart from spending time doing power-lifting in the gym.
These routines of his has propelled him into a six-hitting machine in the Indian Premier League (IPL) since the beginning of last season. In terms of balls faced per six, he has a frankly absurd ratio of 6.6 (28 out of 186). To put this into some context, Abhishek Sharma, the leading six-hitter in the same time period, is at 6.8. That he has managed this while averaging 72 is one of the reasons why a) RCB are the defending champions and b) they are odds on to at least advance to the next phase.
He said it's about managing risk and reward. "It's really difficult but I have played my whole career in the middle order," he said. "So I understand certain risks and I have found success in doing different things and replicating that. I think there's always a risk in any decision. For me, it would be riskier to play defensively because the team would go 'you are of no use to us, see you later'. But it takes a lot of conviction to be able to keep taking risks because you understand that if it doesn't go well, you are going to get criticised and you are also going to be disappointed in yourself because I have come to India for three months and I want to have a good season. I want to be successful with RCB, I want my team to win."
Signed for Rs 3 cr by the franchise in the last mega auction, the Australian has already repaid that. Now, it's a question of repeating the same trick a year later.