The Heinrich Klaasen thump: Dissecting the South African’s stunning shot off Yuzvendra Chahal for six over cover

It all begins with the spinner dropping the ball a fraction short. Not short in half-tracker range, not even back-of-length, but just a trifle shorter than good length, so as to hurry the batsman, a flipper gone slightly wrong, or an endeavour to over-spin and create bounce, or a mere change of length. The Chepauk surface did whip up some bounce, more spongy than a trampoline. It’s all that Klaasen wants. A wee bit of space. He makes half a stride backwards. It’s where he differs from most batsmen, who shuffle towards the leg side to manufacture room for the fluent swing of the blade, to generate the impetus for the stroke to soar over the ropes over extra cover.

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But Klaasen stands still. He does not need the swing of the blade to generate power. A flex of the forearms suffices. If there is an all-forearm player r– like an all-hands batsman — he would be the one.

The stroke bursts from nothingness. It’s as though he were going to punch the ball off the back foot through covers, for a single or two. But he then takes the front foot away, opens up his guard, spreads his chest like an angry bouncer in a bar, gets on top of the bounce and clumps it over extra cover with a brisk upward thrusting of arms. Chahal smiled wryly. He knew Klaasen would play the shot, and he knew he wouldn’t stop it.

It was all forearms fury—more than hand-eye coordination. An excited Ravi Shastri, on air, would gush: “You need to be a strong man to play that shot, really strong.” Colleague Matthew Hayden warned the potential impersonators: “Don’t try this at home.” It comes strictly with a parental guidance label.

Heinrich Klaasen of Sunrisers Hyderabad during the qualifier 2 match of the Indian Premier League season 17 (IPL 2024) between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals held at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai on the 24th May 2024. (Photo by Saikat Das / Sportzpics for IPL)

A side-on frame shows how he bends his upper body really back, the entire weight on his back foot, functioning as the axis of his body, as he powers the ball over extra cover. The visual effect is such that he seems to have mistimed it — less powerful batsmen do end up mistiming — but it invariably reaches the stands. “I try and keep it simple; the focus has been to have my head and hands dead still. Sometimes when you go searching for the ball, the up and down movement of the hands cause some inconsistency. The trick is to have hands and head as dead and still as possible,” he once explained about his batting.

Batsmen clearing the extra cover is not a rare sight, but often they dance down the track, as Virat Kohli does, or Herschelle Gibbs used to. Gibbs too was a ruthless destroyer of spin bowling, like Klaasen. This stroke though was more reminiscent of Lance Klusener, in the sheer fury of the forearms and how he wields those to generate power and elevation, hitting the ball to those parts of the ground perceived difficult to hit off the back foot.

Fearing the shot, bowlers stray onto his body, which is another strength of his. He hangs on the back foot, and when they err slightly on the shorter side, he would merely pounce on them. Like the two pulls he employed off who else, but Chahal, who he insists is a good friend of his. Neither ball was too short begging to be hit, neither had much width for a free swing but he went back, swayed his body a bit and unleashed those massive forearms. In the process, he neutralized one of Royals’ trump card too, besides sustaining momentum that the top-order had infused.

In the past he has spoken about his love for leg-spinners and duels with Chahal. “I fancy him quite a lot. Especially when I was in amateur cricket, there were a couple of quality leg-spinners in that time when I started my career. I faced (leg-spinner) Shaun von Berg at the Titans (Klaasen’s domestic team) a lot as well. We always joke that I need to finish the other leg-spinners’ career so he can go up!” Beware the Klaasen Thump. The wrath of his forearms.