In this article let’s take a look at whether does height matter in cricket and playing cricket increases your height or not in detail.
If you are regular cricket fan or you want to become a cricketer in future then you should read this article till the end because I have been playing Cricket since more than five years now and
I have been watching the game since a long time and I will let you know everything you need to know about height and cricket in detail in this article.
So without further ado let’s get started.
Does height matter in cricket?
To answer the question in simple words,
Height definitely does matter in cricket and there are many benefits if you are taller in cricket game especially as a fast bowlers you can get Extra bounce and frequently bowl hard lengths on the cricket pitch and you can have many benefits of being tall as a fielder in the cricket especially at catching the ball at the boundary line.
Let me give you 6 amazing benefits of being taller which can help you in the game of Cricket.
Benefits of being taller in Cricket.
- By being taller, as a fast bowler you can extract the bounce in the pitch more compared to normal bowlers because you have a higher release point than normal people who are shorter, i.e the ball has a bigger chance of bouncing more
- By being taller, as a fast bowler you can bowl hard lengths consistently on the cricket pitch in order to take wickets especially in test match
- By being taller, you can have higher backlift & longer bat handle & hit big boundaries & sixes easily
- By being taller, you can have more pace length and you can cover the cricket pitch which is of 22 yards faster as a batsmen to score the runs like singles & two’s compared to a shorter batsmen
- By being taller, you can catch higher balls in the air at the boundary line easily compared to shorter bowlers
- By being taller you can field and save more runs on the field and boundary line by diving and jumping and using your height as advantage to stop the ball
Some good examples of tall cricketers who utilizes their height to full advantage are, Kyle jamieson, Morne morkel, and tim Southee, etc
Everything has its own positives and negatives including being tall in cricket and there are a few drawbacks of being tall in cricket especially as a batsmen like
you will have to bend more to defend your stumps in cricket and it can get difficult to play some shorts like sweep shot, reverse sweep, hook, pull, and other cricketing shots and it can also get a little tough to defend the ball.
Generally height can help you more as a fast bowlers compared to batsmen because as a fast bowler you can not only have a higher release point of the ball as a bowler and extract more bounce from the pitch and hit hard lengths which are ideal to take wickets especially in test match.
But when it comes to batting, of course It can give you an edge by having a higher back lift and High bat handle in order to score runs and hit big sixes but historically
there are many legendary batsman like Sachin Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar or Virat Kohli or the great Don Bradman have height of 5 feet 7 inches, and they are not very tall in cricket, but they are best batsman in their era in the history of cricket.
So of course height can definitely give you an advantage but you should not get demotivated if you are not very tall because there are many batsman and cricketers who are even though not very tall,
they are legends of the game like Sachin Tendulkar who is the God of cricket has a height of 5 feet 5 inches but has scored 100 centuries across test and ODI matches.
How you can grow taller & does playing cricket make you tall and increase your height?
Before answering the question of how you can grow taller and increase your height for cricket, I would like to answer the second question quickly is,
Does playing cricket make you taller and increase your height?
In short term, playing just cricket does not much help you increase your height but in the long run, bowling, fielding, batting and running or jogging you do in cricket can indirectly help you grow taller because
as you already know that cricket requires you to run frequently as a bowler, fielder and batsmen in order to catch the ball or score runs and running frequently on the ground while playing cricket will make your hamstring muscles in legs stronger and
strengthen the bones in your legs and increase length of your bones of legs and running will loosen up the muscles in your legs and
make your body flexible, secretes human growth hormone more, improve your body posture which together overall can help you increase your height in the long run.
But apart from playing cricket you should also focus on 3 important things such as exercise, diet and sleep in order to increase your height if you want to as a cricketer.
Some best exercises you can do to increase your height are pull ups, Forward Bend, Bar Hanging, Cobra Stretch, Wall Stretch, Dry Land Swimming, Pelvic Lift, forward Spine Stretch, etc, and
you can also do some yogic exercises to increase your height such as mountain pose and cobra pose and you should have a straight & good posture of body which can help you increase your height.
on the other hand some best foods you can eat are beans, chicken, yogurt, sweet potatoes, almonds eggs, fish, berries and carrots, etc to increase your height because nutrition plays a huge role apart from genetics and more than exercise.
And of course you should also have a sound sleep of at least 8 hours every day depending upon the age for example,
- Children ages 6-13 get nine to 11 hours of sleep
- Teenagers ages 14-17 get eight to 10 hours of sleep
- Adults ages 18-64 get seven to nine hours of sleep
At the end of day, sleep is the only time where your muscles, height and your weight grows, so you should never ever ignore having a sound sleep.
You should keep in mind that increasing your height is alot to do with your genetics for example if your father, grandfather or any other person in your family is taller than you will have more chances to grow tall and vice versa and after the age of 18 and 19 most people both male and female will stop growing their height because of adolescent age.
So with that said let’s conclude the blog.
Conclusion
These are all the things you need to know about Being tall in cricket.
I hope you have now understood why being tall is good and how you can increase your height for cricket.
Do comment down what are other exercises you recommend in order to increase the height as a cricketer in the comment section below.
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