Big Short: The baseball influence on T20 star's rise

In his early days with Victoria, Matthew Short was occasionally referred to as Greg Chappell, such was the upright stance and languid swing the talented right-hander from Ballarat possessed.

The two rangy batters stand roughly the same height: Short is 187cm tall, Chappell 185cm. Yet, as Short approached his 25th birthday in 2020, the comparisons with the former Test captain and batting legend just about ended there.

Leading into the 2020-21 domestic season, Short had had played six seasons of professional cricket. Across all formats, he had scored just one century – in a tour match against England for a Cricket Australia XI. As a middle-order bat, he averaged 32 from 32 Sheffield Shield innings, 28 in List A cricket from 42 innings, and 16 from 29 T20 innings. He has acknowledged they were hardly spectacular numbers.

A turning point was to come the following year when Adelaide Strikers promoted him to open the batting in BBL|11. Within 18 months of that breakout 2021-22 summer, he would make his international debut.

But Short's transformation from middling domestic returns to becoming one of the country's most damaging hitters goes back further.

And its genesis was in a baseball bat.

That 2020 winter, Chris Rogers took over from Andrew McDonald as Victoria's coach. He told Short and fellow emerging allrounder Will Sutherland he envisaged the pair lining up as middle-to-lower order finishers in the state's one-day side.

It freed the pair up to pursue alternative approaches to developing their power games.

"We just had a bit of fun for a few months in the pre-season, in the indoors on the bowling machines," Short tells cricket.com.au from Tauranga ahead of his international comeback this week against New Zealand.

"We got baseball bats out and started hitting softballs off a tee, playing around with swings and watching YouTube clips. Just trying to implement a bit of that baseball set-up and swing.

"I found a swing that worked and a stance that worked and I've stuck with it. From that pre-season on, it pretty much stuck and has felt pretty natural ever since."

In Jarrad Loughman, Victoria's long-time emerging players coach, Short had an open-minded mentor and sounding board who had become interested in the crossover benefits baseball training could have on cricketers.

Loughman, encouraged by McDonald when he was Victoria's coach, had actually entered a team of young Victorian cricketers into a C-grade suburban Melbourne baseball competition, playing for the Croydon Rams. Mitch Perry was a major beneficiary, as were fellow fringe state and BBL players like Mackenzie Harvey, Wil Parker and Liam Bowe. McDonald and Australia leg-spinner Georgia Wareham even filled in for the Rams when they were short of players. After winning only two games in their first season, they won the premiership in their second.

The objective was mainly to develop the ground fielding and throwing power of the younger Victorian players. Short did not play for the baseball team. But Loughman had encouraged him to look at how elements of the baseball swing could help his batting.

"The basis of it is around when you get a hard length ball you can't hit with a vertical bat to get power," says Loughman, "which Shorty does quite well when it's full, hitting down the ground with his height.

"But when you don't get that full length, when you get a hard, top-of-the-stumps length, how do you still hit that with power?"

This got to the crux of some of the issues the leanly built Short felt he had with his short-form batting. When bowlers hit a blockhole yorker or thigh-to-hip-high length to him, his options were limited.

Even now, as one of the country's leading T20 batters, he looks around the Australian changing room at fellow blasters like Tim David, Marcus Stoinis and Mitchell Owen who can all, as Short puts it, "shank them for six".

"I don't really have that luxury," he says.

"I'm obviously not a very built person, so I was never a 'stand and deliver' kind of power hitter. I've always had the levers – I'm tall and have got longer arms – so it's been about making sure the swing is right and connection point was right."

Loughman helped Short with that. Perhaps more importantly, he helped make batting practice fun during that 2020 winter. He introduced Short to a variety of training aids typically used by baseball sluggers. He facilitated sessions where Short and Sutherland hit throwdowns towards the indoors nets' speed guns, which had been installed to pick up how fast balls were being bowled. They found a second use here; measuring velocity off the bat.

They also used the 'Hurricane' swing trainer and the 'Hack Attack' ball machine, among other funky training aids.

Short played around with his stance and the position of his hands at ball release; baseballers typically hold their hands much higher than cricketers. A perfect swing sees them tilt their body back slightly, while simultaneously throwing weight into their braced front leg.

In short; a completely different swing.

"One option is trying to hit into your front leg, so it's actually not stepping to the ball, it's driving into that front leg and that's what creates that leverage to get your hands through the ball," says Loughman.

"That gives you a braced front leg and that's effectively what a baseball swing is … (for a cricketer) it becomes a 45-degree or horizontal bat swing."

Both have since moved to Queensland – Loughman to Brisbane after taking on a new role with Queensland Cricket, Short to the Gold Coast where his wife Madi is from. The coach, who has now started a baseball team with a bunch of Queensland cricketers, was not initially aware of the influence the baseball training had had on Short.

Short was player of the season in consecutive BBL campaigns (in 2022-23 and '23-24, the 12th and 13th editions of the tournament) and has emerged as a bright prospect for Australia's white-ball sides.

The secret has been simple; the now 29-year-old has figured out how to conquer good bowlers' best balls.

One of the considerations that emerged from that 2020 winter of experimentation was on the kind of spin he imparted on the ball after he hit it. A back-spinning shot will travel further than an overspun one.

The pick-up shot he plays off fast bowlers, the one that sends straight, good length balls sailing for six over the leg-side, is also a direct result of that pre-season.

"I feel like if the ball is on that length, it's natural now from all that training just to get up and under it, open the face and use the pace of it," says Short.

Five years on, Short, now on the verge of becoming an established member of both white-ball sides, has different hurdles to overcome.

This year, his biggest challenge has been staying on the park.

His first ICC event was nixed in February due to a quadriceps injury he suffered at the Champions Trophy. That sidelined him from a planned stint at the Pakistan Super League, but he returned for the Major League Cricket tournament months later, finishing as the USA T20 league's fourth leading run-scorer despite playing just eight (of a possible 13) games.

Short then arrived in Jamaica for Australia's five-T20I series against West Indies, only to suffer what turned out to be a cartilage fracture in his rib, having trained too heavily across three lead-in days to the series. His planned comeback for the Top End series against South Africa in August was aborted when the injury did not settle. 

The string of issues has prompted a toning down of his training regime, which he had dialled up over recent years, something he partially attributes to seeing the hours his wife, a dual Olympic swimming gold medallist, had put in at the pool before her retirement.

"When I look back two years ago, I probably wasn't training enough," says Short, who now has a young son, Austin, with Madi.

"I was just going through the motions a bit and going from series to series and just getting through.

"Recently, it's been almost too much training. On top of all the series and overseas comps, I was probably over training and probably over gym-ing making sure my body was right. I probably overcooked it a little bit.

"I've sat down with the physios and staff at CA, and just worked out plans around training smarter, and what the actual balance is between series and training and domestic stuff as well. It's been a bit of a process."

Short had made some headway into solidifying his spot at the top of Australia's T20 batting order during bilateral matches in the aftermath of the failed World Cup campaign in the Caribbean last year, at which he was a non-playing reserve.

But his recent absences have allowed Mitch Marsh to move up from first drop to partner Travis Head. Marsh, the side's captain, has confirmed Australia plan to take that opening combination into next year's World Cup in India and Sri Lanka.

It leaves Short with a somewhat uncertain outlook. Glenn Maxwell's broken wrist on the eve of this week's series will likely see Short take on a greater role with his off-spin, while Josh Inglis' absence due to injury could see him tried at No.3.

"The thought always comes into your mind every time you get injured or you get dropped, you always sort of question where you fit into the team," says Short.

"But there's plenty of games from now until the World Cup. There's plenty of water to go under the bridge for selectors to figure out the team and see which way they want to go.

"Mitch is right in saying that he and Heady have every right to be opening the batting. So if it's somewhere in that top three or four – 'Ronnie' (McDonald) has been pretty clear on trying guys in different positions so they can really nail down the order come World Cup time.

"I guess it's always just being flexible. Just the way T20 is evolving nowadays is that guys can bat anywhere.

"The way I bat, and the experiences that I've had, I would be more than happy to bat in the middle if that's what they want."

Qantas Tour of New Zealand

First T20: October 1, Bay Oval, Mount Maunganui, 4:15pm AEST

Second T20: October 3, Bay Oval, Mount Maunganui, 4:15pm AEST

First T20: October 4, Bay Oval, Mount Maunganui, 4:15pm AEST

New Zealand squad: Michael Bracewell (c), Mark Chapman, Devon Conway, Jacob Duffy, Zak Foulkes, Matt Henry, Bevon Jacobs, Kyle Jamieson, Daryl Mitchell, Rachin Ravindra, Tim Robinson, Ben Sears, Tim Seifert, Ish Sodhi

Australia squad: Mitchell Marsh (c), Sean Abbott, Xavier Bartlett, Alex Carey, Tim David, Ben Dwarshuis, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Matt Kuhnemann, Mitchell Owen, Josh Philippe, Matthew Short, Marcus Stoinis, Adam Zampa

All matches live via Kayo Sports and Foxtel