AHMEDABAD: A little before 10 PM on Wednesday night at Eden Gardens, Finn Allen was the centre of the cricketing universe. A T20 World Cup 100 off 33 balls. A sentence that has never been written before. A sentence that may never be written again.
It was a rabble-rousing century, befitting the occasion of a World Cup semifinal. On Sunday, Allen will be a significant threat for India. But Allen wasn't always like this. He was always destructive but he wasn't an opener. For a period of time, there were some self doubts. There were some technical flaws too as a result of which he had become prone to losing his wicket to the incoming delivery, especially off left-arm seamers.
To talk about Allen the Black Caps opener, it's important to go the very beginning; to talk about Allen, the uncapped middle-order batter for Auckland. "First time I saw a glimpse of him was when he was in an opposition team and we faced him in a four-day game," says Glenn Pocknall, a coach at Wellington. "He was facing up to Ben Sears' 145 clicks and playing him with ease when everybody else struggled. Just the positions he was getting into and the way he was hitting down the ground."
Pocknall, who has been a stand-in coach for the Black Caps previously, met Allen a few months after the game. He had an offer Allen couldn't refuse. "'I would really like for you to come to Wellington' is what I told him," Pocknall remembers. There was some hesitation but Allen didn't want to pass up the opportunity. "He was unsure what his role would be. I told him he would open in T20 cricket. He was a bit shocked with that because he had never been considered as an opener at that level."
Just after moving to Wellington, he broke through to the national set-up. An IPL call-up followed. Things started to happen for Allen. Before long, he had replaced Martin Guptill in the XI, a Kiwi white-ball stalwart. Behind the scenes, though, Pocknall and the support staff were working with him to inject an extra layer of self belief. "He probably lacked a bit of self belief at that level," Pocknall says. "The main thing was working on his mindset. He's a very smart cricketer, very intellectual. It was just about calling his mind, keeping it simple. Just concentrate on the ball and react to it. He would score runs naturally and score runs fast. From a training perspective, it was all about watching the ball and looking to hit it straight. Everything else flowed from it."
One of the byproducts of that constant messaging — look straight and hit straight — was that Allen became a demon down the ground. One of his most successful takedowns in T20 cricket came against Mitchell Starc in a group game in the 2022 T20 World Cup. His 16-ball 42 was a 101 on hitting down the ground.
By that time, the 26-year-old has already become a fixture in leagues around the world. Gigs in the IPL, Blast and MCL turbocharged his development as he managed to share dressing rooms with royalty. "He hasn't had a power-hitting coach but he has been surrounded by a lot of great cricketers in different T20 environments," Pocknall says. "In that way, he has learnt a lot from the likes of (Virat) Kohlil, AbD (AB Devilliers)... in a sense, they coached him."
He has also worked a lot to address a weakness, stepping across to off stump. It left him vulnerable to the moving ball. "There were slight technical adjustments he made," Pocknall says. "It pertained to pushing his hands back and having much of a balance at the time of release (of the ball). It helps with alignment when the ball swings. It sets him up really well for hitting down the ground."
Against Marco Jansen, he pillaged 31 off 7 including two sixes and a four down the ground. He will look to do the same against Arshdeep Singh.
India have been warned.
