Jordan Hermann’s technically-correct approach to aggressive batting stems from his time playing garden cricket with his family.
Hermann’s father, Marius, is a big fan of technically-correct batting and went as far as to set a special rule for their games of garden cricket that any ball hit in the air was automatically out.
Of course, some fathers might argue he was just worried about the windows.
They also used all range of garden furniture, plant pots, family members and paraphernalia to severely punish any errant shots, which turned elegant cover drives and sharp cuts into high-value shots.
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“It was important to my dad that we were all technically correct. He also always wanted us to play on the ground, so anything off the ground was out,” the Sunrisers Eastern Cape batsman told CS Chiwanza in a Stumped! article.
He took his pristine technique to indoor action cricket, where he realised straight bat shots along the ground could be highly rewarded because the risk of going out (and having runs deducted) was vastly reduced.
“I faced a bit of criticism from some of the coaches at the time, they said to me action cricket was going to mess up the boys’ techniques because played in a certain way,” Marius explained. “I said it wasn’t because there was no need to change your game to play action cricket.”
Hermann continues to prove that proper technique doesn’t need to be a hindrance to aggressive cricket, having scored 109 runs in four SA20 innings at an average of 27.25 and a strike rate of 111.22.
