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Finn Allen’s foot is not on the ground. He probably hasn’t read the length well, and it’s fuller than he wanted. His back foot is almost on the stumps, because that’s how far back he wants to play spinners. He’s got himself into a bit of a weird shape, and then he flicks the ball rather than a full strike.
So there is no real follow-through. Of course, the ball goes for six anyway.
This is an imperfect shot. It’s impatience, not brilliantly balanced, and not fully committed. But it still goes for six, because it feels like all of them do.
Finn Allen played a one-footed, backfoot, out-of-shape on drive with no follow-through for six off a spinner.
He didn’t face a ball until the ninth delivery of the second innings. After that, he faced only 32 more, and yet made a hundred. This was video game batting on easy mode. And when he was done it was game over, man. Game over.
Allen finished South Africa.
***
Don’t let the beard fool you. Finn Allen is still really young. If you take that thing off, he looks like he’s maybe 20 or 21. But he is actually 26 years old now.
And like Ishan Kishan, these guys feel like they’ve been frustrating fans for a long time. That’s because they obviously have huge amounts of talent. But now, they’re reaching the age that most batters make runs.
Last year, when I saw Finn Allen almost destroy the Coliseum in Oakland with a knock for Major League Cricket, I wondered if we were ever going to see him do this kind of thing at the top level.
Because the talent has never been the problem. It’s the consistency, and standing up against the best bowlers in the world.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been told a lot of things about Finn Allen. That he can’t play in Asia. That he probably never will make runs against great bowlers. That he can’t play if there is anything at all in the wicket. And that he’s not a big-game player.
Some of these actually made sense when he was younger, because he was a little bit looser than he is now. But in the last year, year and a half, Finn Allen has been smashing the ball everywhere against everyone.
Perhaps all he needed was that final bit of maturation. Because when you look at the raw product of what Finn Allen is, it’s remarkable.
He’s essentially like New Zealand’s Martin Guptill – but with more power. A bigger body. His height means he can get to normal length balls and smash them straight back down the ground over and over again. It’s a really good combination of tall and strong.
A little bit like Daryl Mitchell, he has the ability to reach these balls and then just swing his bat through them and they disappear. So you cannot bowl length to him, unless you’re swinging the ball early.
But the other thing is that because he is so big and powerful, he can mishit boundaries. A bit like Daryl Mitchell, Corey Anderson, and a lot of the West Indian players.
This ball he was late on and didn’t quite middle it – and it just flew away anyway. It didn’t matter.
A bit like the shot we started the episode on. That wasn’t him at his absolute best. There were a bunch of errors there. But he still chipped a boundary wide of long-on.
But generally, when he decides to hit a boundary, he throws pretty much everything at it. Anytime he sees a loose ball, it’s very likely he’s just going to absolutely spam the power button and try to hit it as hard as possible.
Now, of course, he’s not going to middle everything. But because of that – and the strength that he has – a lot of those balls will just fly off anywhere. There were a bunch of edges today that he also got boundaries from.
I think this is one of the big issues with him, and this new breed of thrashers. There actually just aren’t enough fielders that you can put outside the powerplay. In a way, he feels like a death hitter who can open the batting.
If you think of Abhishek Sharma or Mitch Owen, it’s a similar kind of player. They’re batting like they’re at the death, but with all the fielders in. That’s always been the dream.