Notes on Tristan Stubbs and power hitting
Tristan Stubbs, Michael Smith, Julian Wood and power-hitting.
About two weeks before the SA20 auction, I decided to do another article on Tristan Stubbs. I had two recent ones out there - you can read here and here - but Stubbs is the gift that keeps on giving. I decided to do a piece on his power-hitting. I spoke to his S&C coach at the Warriors, talked to Michael Smith (again) and then roped in Julian Wood, a power-hitting specialist coach.
Something happened, I do not know what it is, but, the more I worked on the piece, the less coherent it grew. I felt as if I was trapped in a rabbit hole. Under normal circumstances, I would shelve it because it is not an article. It lacks the core ingredients that would make it an article. This one time, I decide not to condemn it to the pile of unpublished material. So, I am inviting you to be stuck in the rabbit hole with me:
Tristan Stubbs was on leg-stump. Stubbs had dispatched Moeen Ali’s previous delivery for a six, so the Englishman decided to hide the ball from Stubbs. He bowled a brilliant wider ball outside off stump. Stubbs whacked the delivery over extra cover for a six. Not many batters can pull off a shot like that. But Tristan Stubbs did in his first innings for the Proteas.
The then almost-22-year-old Stubbs appeared on the scene readymade for international cricket. He looked at home in T20Is. Stubbs had the same vibe when he made his debut for the Warriors in 2021. He was dispatching some of South Africa’s best bowlers with ease. Stubbs’ career is in its nascent stage, but the 22-year-old has already provided ample indication that his gifts translate readily to the sport’s highest stages.
Just two years before his debut for the Warriors, Stubbs was in the nets at Grey High School working on his power-hitting:
Tristan Stubbs cleared his left leg a little bit, knees bent. He was now in a well-balanced position from where he could hit long balls. This is his power stance. It is almost like a baseball stance. He had his helmet, gloves and pads on. The only thing that was missing was the bat, it was lying a few feet behind him. He did not need it yet.
Michael Smith threw a three-kilogram medicine ball toward Stubbs. Maintaining his power stance, Stubbs grabbed the ball and threw it back to Smith in one smooth motion. The action ‘activates’ the legs, glutes and core. Stubbs maintained the stance after each throwback to Smith. He made sure that his finish position was strong as well.
“We normally do three to four rounds of six medicine ball throws. Through it, Stubbs stays almost like a coiled spring for as long as he can. This helps with explosiveness when playing shots,” says Smith.
12 underhand throws followed each round of medicine ball throws from the halfway point. Stubbs was required to maintain his power stance as he power hit the balls into the same area. Smith uses bowling machine balls for this part of the drill. They are more durable compared to regular cricket balls. The medicine ball drills have a few variations, depending on the shot Stubbs would be working on.
The drill was one of many that Smith designed to improve Stubbs’ boundary power-hitting abilities. Smith’s drills are either adaptations, modifications or inspired by Julian Wood, the self-described power-hitting whisperer.
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Let’s talk about Julian Wood:
In his book, Jon Hotten tells the story of Chris Gayle. Around 2010, a different Chris Gayle appeared on the IPL scene. He looked nothing like Gayle who had undergone heart surgery in 2005. He had bulked up. His shoulders, chest and back had slabs of muscle that had not been there before. He had widened his stance at the crease and was much more economical in his movements.
Two years earlier, Julian Wood had seen this type of cricketer as the future of T20 cricket. Only he had not seen Chris Gayle. Wood had seen baseball players up close, thanks to Ted Vidrine, a baseball hitting coach, he had met in Miami.
“Ted and I just started chatting. Then he introduced me to a guy called Scotty Coolbaugh, the Texas Rangers’ hitting coach. The Rangers are a Major League Baseball franchise,” says Wood. “Watching them train in their batting cages, their equivalent of nets, I was amazed by their size. They were huge and their focus was on hitting the ball as hard as they can. Right then, I realised that this is the way cricket had to go.”
Gayle’s transformation led to a gradual change among West Indies batters, they bulked up. In the UK, Julian Wood was still trying to bring change to how players trained for white ball cricket. He was met with resistance. Wood was in familiar territory. In the 1980s and ‘90s, Wood spent a large of his professional career as a player being told no. ‘No, you can't do that and you can't play like that.’ Julian Wood was an aggressive batter, his aggression was considered too risky, sometimes a little reckless.
After his playing days were done, the natural progression for him was to go into coaching. There, he encountered the same issues. “I felt restricted as a coach because it was boring, it was the same old stuff, head to the ball and all the old stuff,” says Wood.
It took Wood about seven years before he was taken seriously. In 2015 he worked with his first high-profile player, Alex Hales.
Wood had an immediate impact on Alex Hales’ game. He improved Hales’ exit velocity. By the time Hales walked out of Julian Wood’s facility at Bradfield College, the Stalker Pro 2 Radar readings showed that Hales’ exit velocity had risen by around three or four miles per hour. Since then, Wood has worked with stars that include Liam Livingstone and Carlos Braithwaite privately. Julian Wood is on Punjab Kings’ coaching staff in the IPL.
Julian Wood has a drill that requires a mat, a bat and some balls. The mat is slippery. The batter faces deliveries from the bowling machine with their back foot on the mat. If the batter’s technique is wrong, there is a chance they might fall over because they will lose balance when they are making shots.
“Ground contact is a key element to consistently hit the ball hard, so I use mats that slide underfoot to encourage good ground contact,” says Wood. “If your movement is efficient and right then everything flows. Whereas if it's wrong, then you become off balance.”
In his drills, Wood also uses weighted bats and balls. The weighted balls are soft, so they sit on the bat for a long time. So, batters have to get their hands through the ball for it to go anywhere. If they do it right, the balls go forward and they stay round. If they do it wrong, the balls go sideways and the balls also lose shape. They take on an oval shape.
These kinds of balls and weighted bats encourage players to swing as fast as they can while also developing their strength. While describing his approach, Wood says his methods are aimed at players hitting the ball as far as possible. Wood speaks a lot about batters’ swing planes and exit velocity.
In addition to weighted bats and balls, Wood gets his batters to practice hitting with weights attached to their arms, wrists and hips. Julian Wood is sort of cricket’s mad scientist batting coach. He is constantly tinkering and looking at other sports for inspiration to improve power-hitting.
Stripped down to its essence, Wood’s training overloads technique. “First, we get the technique right and then we overload it and do lots of isometric movements,” says Wood.
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“I remember Tristan running the highest level (21.2) on the YO-YO intermittent recovery test back when he was still 18 at one of our TAP u19 camps. He also enjoys the high intensity type training that has obviously assisted him in his power game,” says Runeshan Moodley, Stubbs’ strength and conditioning coach at the Warriors.
Stubbs also stands out in visual training that Moodley does through Fitlight exercises.
When speaking of Stubbs, Moodley echoes Robbie Petersen. Stubbs is always looking for ways to grow and improve his game. He has a growth mindset. This mindset is the reason why Stubbs chose Manchester Originals over the other two teams that courted him during the duration of The Hundred.
I read somewhere that John Jacobs said 'Golf is such a difficult game because there are so many ways of playing it correctly.’
Cricket has always resisted this idea. The idea that there could be many ways to play it correctly is one that coaches and commentators have waged war against. That is why the MCC Coaching Manual exists. It is an attempt at uniformity when it comes to batting. When anyone speaks of textbook shots or textbook techniques, this is the text they are referencing.
Stubbs’ batting style is not in the MCC Coaching Manual. It is imperfect because it is a homemade technique. He imagined and developed during his years of backyard cricket and the Knysna Sports School. Stubbs is fortunate that Michael Smith and Richard Gilbert, his coaches at Grey High School, and then Robbie Petersen, later at the Warriors, did not coach technique, instead, they coached the player.
According to the MCC Coaching Manual, Stubbs’ technique is imperfect. But, it is perfect for Tristan Stubbs. His style allows him to maximise his physical assets. Stubbs stands at 6ft 4in.
“If you and me are the same; so we're the same weight, the same height and we're using the same bat, facing the same bowler who's bowling the same ball on the same wicket, the guy who will hit the ball the hardest will be which one of us swings that bat the quickest. The one who swings the bat the quickest will hit the ball they will have the greater exit velocity,” says Wood.
There is a third side to this conversation. If both players can move their bodies at similar speeds, but one is taller than the other, the taller player will hit the ball harder due to their larger levers. Taller players hit the ball harder and further. Height is now as important to cricket as it has always been to baseball.
In T20 cricket batters are attackers and bowlers are defenders. Height matters a lot if you are trying to hit as many balls over the boundary as possible. At this point in the evolution of the game, there is less value in how the ball was struck. Instead, the important thing is how well the ball was struck. The stronger and taller you are, the better you are going to strike the ball.
So, if you were trying to develop a prototype of a young T20 cricketer, there is a chance it would resemble Tristan Stubbs. At 6ft 4in, Stubbs is only one foot shorter than Kieron Pollard, Julian Wood’s ideal cricketer. According to Julian Wood, he is on the mark physically. Also, like Pollard, he is not a single discipline player, he also bowls - and keeps wicket on the odd occasion.