Talk With Your Bat, Not Your Mouth

By Paddy Upton

Faf du Plessis once told me his numbers against Australia were some of the best of his career, and against Pakistan or New Zealand, some of his worst.

Not a form problem. Not a technique problem. Same bat, same technique, same player.

The difference was how loud the chirping was.

There’s a common belief in cricket that saying something to a player will genuinely put them off their game. Faf calls it overrated thinking. For him, it works the opposite way. The more people chirp him, the more it switches him on.

Against David Warner, that was easy. This is the guy, he’d tell himself. It’s me and you today. Quieter teams gave him nothing to work with, so he built his own version. Pick a fielder. Zoom in on him. Chest out. Let’s go, today we’re playing against you.

He told me himself it’s hard to manufacture that every match. You can’t fake it. You need one or two things you know will actually work, and go back to them.

It wasn’t only about opponents chirping, either. He described it as a fighter in his own character, one that didn’t need a fielder standing over him to show up. During one IPL, he told me the same instinct kicked in off the field. He wanted to prove something to South African cricket, not to an opponent at slip.

We also talked about sledging more broadly that day. It doesn’t work on everyone. It lands maybe half the time. Some players it fires up. Some it does nothing to. Some it throws off completely.

Faf was never the one doing the chirping. He was on the end of it, and instead of shutting down or hitting back with words of his own, he paid attention to what it did to him, and used it. Whatever he felt in that moment, the answer was always the same. Runs, not words.

I told him that early on, working with him one on one: talk with your bat, that’s the best currency you can use.