Leftie Struggling With Batting

[klarissa]

As a left handed batsmen I have been struggling for the past 2-3 years having a satisfying innings.
firstly a couple of things which irritate me are:

1) most bowlers are right handed and are not used to bowling to left handers so in practice / nets I rarely hae a chanace to practise the traditional shots such as a offside drives. I keep getting bowled to my leg side and a lot of those lbw occasions arise.

2)my drives are weak in power when i play the drive shot in the textbook method- i step towards the ball, head down and hit the ball under my eyes with a figure 9 shape and high elbows. However what I realise it that with timing, I am actually losing power from my shot, especially when I am required to lean my upper body over which is not an ideal position for anyone to be in a balanced position anyway.

I can hit fine when the ball is static but when the ball is being bowled from the other end... all those drills seems to be useless

3) I have been told that a batsmen only moves down the crease to play a shot if they are experienced enough... is that true?

4) moving my feet - of course in drills, we all know that we move our feet towards the ball in order to get a smooth swinging action.

However, I have no idea how to judge where the ball lands (e.g. spin bowlers bowling with a dip just before it reaches the batsmen to create a catchout opportunity). I personally think that the ability to judge where the ball lands is much more important than the swing itself as it would determine where your front foot should step towards to.

Was wondering if anyone has any drills I can do on my own to improve.

 

[SLA]

As a left handed batsmen I have been struggling for the past 2-3 years having a satisfying innings.
firstly a couple of things which irritate me are:

1) most bowlers are right handed and are not used to bowling to left handers so in practice / nets I rarely hae a chanace to practise the traditional shots such as a offside drives. I keep getting bowled to my leg side and a lot of those lbw occasions arise.

yeah, I'm a leftie and I get that a lot too. You just have to deal with it and learn to be good off your legs. It's very important for a leftie in amateur cricket to be able to play the on-drive well, because you get so many balls bowled at your leg stump.

 

[klarissa]

yeah, I'm a leftie and I get that a lot too. You just have to deal with it and learn to be good off your legs. It's very important for a leftie in amateur cricket to be able to play the on-drive well, because you get so many balls bowled at your leg stump.

Yes sometimes I think - the bowlers cant be serious to just keep bowling at my pads... the sweep shot comes in handy only if the bowler bowls short of length and at medium pace.

so I have to figure out another shot... but with the good length from a right handed bowler, I find the attempted sweep too risky as the ball is still in the air when i try to play this shot and it only gives me 50/50 chance of a sure hit and the coach keeps telling me to open up early and play an on drive - which I also begin to doubt if the coach ahs said that simply based on textbook knowledge or not as the boler could well bowl a swing ball and I would be opening my front foot up for a bowl out opportunity!