Julian Wood is transferring power hitting skills to Punjab Kings batters in the IPL

Julian Wood and Prithvi Shaw. (Image via https://www.instagram.com/batpowerguru/)

If you have been following the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL), one franchise that has got a lot of attention has been Punjab Kings with their boom or bust approach.

They have been ultra-aggressive with their batting and have remained amongst the top six hitters in the competition thus far. Currently Punjab are second on the list, with 70 sixes till the 44th match of the tournament, with only Rajasthan Royals ahead of them with 92 sixes. The record for most sixes in an IPL season rests, surprisingly, with Chennai Super Kings who struck 145 sixes in the 2018 season.

But this attacking approach also has its pitfalls as the side has failed to get going a few times and caved in without much on the scoreboard. Rival sides have exploited this open policy of Punjab to be aggressive with the bat.

During a recent debacle against Delhi Capitals, only one batter stood out: the unheralded Jitesh Sharma. “We have decided already on only one (batting) approach for this tournament, which is to play an attacking style of cricket. We probably have not been able to apply it based on the situation we are in. Sometimes we are able to apply but at times we are unable to do so. We are trying to gain the momentum and carry it forward,” explained Sharma after the loss.

While everyone outside the camp is flummoxed by this approach, one reason for this new strategy could be one man from England: Julian Wood.

When he was 21 and making his first-class debut for Hampshire in the English county circuit, he hit his first ball for a boundary. Of course, Wood was the least of the fancied players in that Hampshire line-up which also included stalwarts like David Gower, Malcolm Marshall, Robin Smith and his brother Chris. But Wood caught everyone's attention because he was prepared to be aggressive even in a first-class encounter.

Wood retired in 2006, and then founded his own set-up, JW Cricket Academy in Reading, England. He is now a specialist power hitting coach and the Punjab Kings’ batting consultant. His specialty is training cricketers to be power hitters and develop their skills to hit sixes.

“My exact role within the Punjab team franchise is as a batting consultant. But I see myself emphasising on the ball-striking side of it. As I said before, these guys can all bat so I believe now in T20 cricket you don’t need batting coaches anymore. As coaches now you need more specialists and you need to bring some difference to the table to stimulate them and challenge them more and that is what I am doing,” Wood told Sportskeeda.

He has been carrying his philosophy around the globe with his Academy having tie-ups with set-ups in India and South Africa. At his base in Reading, the Academy operates all through the year for kids aged 5-18. He also works individually with a number of players from the circuit, including England’s talismanic all-rounder Ben Stokes, India’s Test opener Prithvi Shaw, West Indies’ power striker Carlos Brathwaite and another England dasher Sam Billings. Also, amongst his trainees have been England’s female cricketers Danni Wyatt and Georgia Elwiss.

Last year Wood almost joined Rajasthan Royals’ set-up, but the discussions fell through. This time Wood’s deal with Punjab came through at the right time. He was working around the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) when he received a message from former South Africa cricketer and current Punjab assistant coach Jonty Rhodes.

“Jonty messaged me asking if I’d been signed up by any IPL franchises. The conversation evolved from there,” Wood said. “I agreed terms with them a couple of weeks prior to arriving in Mumbai. As a coach, you want to work on the biggest stage with the best players – and it doesn’t get much bigger than the IPL! Luckily, I’ve worked with the likes of Liam Livingstone and Jonny Bairstow when I was with England, so there’s a relationship already there, which makes it easier,” added Wood.

Wood realised that power hitting was going to be an area where the T20 game would be headed. He has worked with sides around the world in the Big Bash League (BBL), Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and BPL before he joined Punjab for the 2022 season.

“I saw where the game was going before anybody else. I am confident in saying that after speaking to a lot of players over the years,” said Wood in an interview with The Indian Express.

The initiation into becoming a power-hitting coach happened by chance for Wood. It was when he was in the United States of America on a holiday in 2009 that he first figured that power-hitting could change T20 cricket. He was in Texas where his sons were in a baseball centre. There, he saw the local side Texas Rangers training. “I got talking with hitting coach Ted Vidrine, who put me on to Scott Coolbaugh, who is Rangers’ hitting coach. My mind started to expand, and I started to think how I can bring it to cricket,” Wood said.

A big believer in usage of the wrist in the concept of big hitting, Wood has managed to strike gold with his approach over the years.

“White-ball batting is hand-eye coordination with power and skill. When you bat, you lead with your head. When you hit, you lead with your hip more. It’s about generating power ground-up, from the hip to the hands. Cricket has been traditionally too hand-reliant. That has to change. Power comes from the torso and hips. A kinetic chain of energy happens when you hit the ball explosively: it comes up from your back leg to your hip, to your back, goes to your shoulder, elbow, and finally to your wrists,” Wood told The Indian Express.

“What I try to do is to join the dots up. You need to separate your hands from your body. You need to do that separation to improve explosiveness. You see that in baseball, the back leg goes back, hands are separated from the body so to say, and then the explosion kicks in,” he added.

Punjab has a number of big strikers of the ball, including Livingstone, Shahrukh Khan and Bairstow. And having Wood as the batting consultant has helped Punjab in terms of keeping the strike rate high.

But the approach also has its pitfalls, as they have found out this season. The team have folded up spectacularly a couple of times already in the 15th edition of the IPL.

“The players sat down and talked about the issue at hand. As you can see that everyone in the line-up is a match winner. We are waiting for one-two people to click in a game. We have decided that we will give ourselves some time to settle on the wickets in the game and play a long innings and gain back the confidence that we have lost because we are all match-winners in the batting line-up,” explained Sharma, Punjab’s go-to man this season.

But the change of approach won’t stop Wood from coming to the training arena with Irish hurling sticks, bungee ropes, claw hammers, weighted bats and other material which form part of his routine.

His approach has gained admirers across England, where they are slowly junking the traditional approach to bat in the shorter formats. Former England coaches Graham Thorpe, Andy Flower and Peter Moores have used his help with the various sides they have coached over the years. England is now one of the most dangerous sides when it comes to big hitting in the shorter formats, and Wood has had a small but significant role in that.

“The game has changed significantly in a very short period of time. Right at the front of that change, and embodying the change itself is Julian Wood. With a vision for the future, and a passion and expertise for his subject that ensures he is himself a leader in this field, Julian is opening batsmen's and coaches’ eyes to another way of doing things. From the biomechanics to the principles of baseball and on to the sheer joy of hitting the ball clean and hard and far, Julian is at the forefront of a fast-evolving game for batsmen and coaches alike,” said Flower about Wood. Flower, a former Zimbabwe captain, is currently head coach of the Lucknow Super Giants.

Wood has not just worked with the traditional big hitters but also with traditional players like England’s Test stalwart Joe Root and the all-rounder Sam Curran. “There are a lot of copycats now, but I know what I have done to the game as a pioneer. I measure the power-hitting, the hand-speed, the bat-exit speed, the launch angles and all this now is part of cricketing terminology too. It feels good,” explained Wood.

The focus for Wood now, though, remains on winning the IPL with Punjab Kings. Despite the bumps along the way, Wood is certain the Punjab Kings can surprise a few sides.

“I think we are the dark horse. All the big guns – the Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Capitals – everybody talks about them. However, I haven’t heard much about our team being mentioned much on the TV, which is good as we can stay under the radar, though I think we are a pretty explosive side with both bat and ball. So, I believe we can win it and hopefully we have a lot of luck with this one,” said Wood.

That optimism of Wood is now wearing thin, as Punjab is slipping fast on the points table after the initial promise. It will require more than just sixes for Punjab to revive their campaign.
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Julian Wood's coaching method is divided into two parts

Hitting Modules

Module 1: Base/Stance/Load: Develop the perfect Power position for you. Strong foundation is critical to being a power hitter

Module 2: Transfer of Power: Develop ability to generate optimum power, transferring from your body to the bat, to the ball as efficiently as possible

Module 3: Contact Zones: Learn correct contact zones to maximise hitting potential, creating greater hitting options. Strong ball contact with the ball critical to power hitting

Module 4: Drills/Mental Mindset: Learn drills and techniques enabling maximum power hitting through overload/under load training. Learn mindset required to be a great hitter

Power Modules

Module 1: Core stabilisation: Key to core stabilisation is rotational power. Build core stabilisation

Module 2: Rotational Power: Gym work: simulate power hitting progress. Stimulating muscles firing sequence to create serious power

Module 3: Lower Body explosion: Develop lower body strength for power foundation to transfer into explosive rotation

Module 4: Upper body strength: Upper body is the final link connecting all of your stored power and elastic energy to the bat and ultimately the ball