To Hook or not to Hook

Another article on the best shot players series. This time focussing on the Hook and Pull shot - truly "the most exciting shot to watch" as mentioned by this cricket.org article.

Again this analysis doesnt do justice to many of the best players of the shot - Ricky Ponting being my favorite. As the article mentions Aussies a re likely to be a master of this shot much better than the sub-continent players (only Tendulkar, Laxman, Jayawardena and Inzamam making the list). Just look at the # of runs they scored: Ponting (597), Hayden (557), Gilchrist (519) , Langer (418). Another noteable is Lara's trade-mark pull-glance shot - i wonder if they included that here or not - a shot which he used so often/regularly in his 375 and 501 innings.

	Runs/ outs	Average	Strike rate	% of total Runs
Nasser Hussain	293/ 2	146.50	196.64	13.14
Shivnarine Chanderpaul	409/ 5	81.80	206.56	14.56
Herschelle Gibbs	485/ 6	80.83	211.79	13.24
Jacques Kallis	484/ 6	80.66	180.59	11.04
Brian Lara	321/ 4	80.25	191.07	8.12
Graham Thorpe	311/ 4	77.75	193.16	14.55
Michael Vaughan	463/ 6	77.16	228.07	13.42
Ricky Ponting	597/ 8	74.62	215.52	14.49