CS Chiwanza
David Miller was making hitting sixes look effortless. He rode the bounce of the short ball from Anrich Nortje and creamed it for a maximum over deep midwicket. It was his third six in a 24-run over that took him to the brink of a 13th IPL fifty, which he cantered to in just 21 balls. Miller was batting for Gujarat Titans against Delhi Capitals on April 24, and while he was at the crease, Titans looked capable of hunting down a massive target of 225.
In the IPL, this was just a continuation of the David Miller Renaissance, which is now in its third year. Since 2022, he has scored 878 runs in the tournament for an average of 44 at a strike rate of 145. His True Values – the difference in averages and expected averages, and strike rates and expected strike rates, of batters who have the same over distribution – put him at +22 on the average and +0.27 on strike rate. And these are before his 23-ball 55 against Capitals, which would have pushed his values further north.
His batting against spin has been a hallmark of his second wind. Since 2022, 41% of his runs have come from facing tweakers at 147.5 in the IPL. There is daylight between those figures and his numbers against spin between 2016 and 2021, where he averaged 23 at a strike rate of 98.7. Teams that enjoyed unleashing spinners the moment he arrived at the crease had to find other ways to contain him. He is batting with a fluency coach Graham Ford had first seen as far back as 2000.
The first thing Ford noticed in their net session was that Miller looked good on the front foot, be it defending or attacking. However, every 11-year-old with basic coaching is confident on the front foot, so that did not impress Ford much. Young Miller’s stock shot through the roof when the coach tested the adolescent on the back foot. Miller rocked on the back foot and middled the ball with panache. Each stroke made a sound that constantly reverberated in and around their home since he been five-years-old.
Miller was born right-handed. He kicks right-footed, writes right-handed, and throws right-handed, but transforms into a left-hander when he has to play with both hands. His parents were unaware of this until an afternoon when he picked up a toy golf club as a toddler. Like most toys, the clubs were designed for right-handers, but, as cool and natural as you like, the young Miller held the club the way a left-hander would.
“Davey, hit this ball back to dad, just hit it back to me,” Andrew Miller encouraged his son as he rolled the plastic ball to the toddler. Without hesitating, the young David made contact with the ball with his first swing, hitting it back to Andrew. His parents thought it was a fluke, so Andrew rolled another ball to him, and like before, Miller struck it cleanly.
As he grew older, Miller gravitated to cricket because his young toddler years revolved around watching his father play premier league cricket for DHS Old Boys on weekends. His Saturdays and Sundays were spent on the grass banks of country districts cricket matches swatting tame deliveries from adults enjoying the action and excursions into the dressing room.
Miller graduated from regular plastic golf and cricket balls when he was five. Andrew introduced the polo ball, which is slightly larger than a cricket ball. Miller fell in love with it immediately. It made a distinct popping sound each time he middled it. Every weekday Andrew would get home to find David waiting for him, half-bat in hand. Andrew had chopped one of his bats in half to make it short enough for David to handle easily. It was still on the heavy side, though.
During the first days, Andrew rolled the ball to David on the concrete strip in the Miller backyard. At night and in the winter, father and son occupied the passage of their home. As the youngster’s arms grew stronger, Andrew started bowling underarm to him. Miller swung hard at each delivery. He wasn’t trying to hit the ball far though. He was trying to reproduce the popping sound as often as possible.
When Andrew hung a polo ball from a tree in a sock in the backyard, Miller invested countless afternoons treating it like a pinata with his half-bat. Andrew was upraised daily of a new high score of hits without missing. Sometimes the young Miller prevailed on his parents to bat by the tree a little into the night too.
Miller’s commitment to reproducing the pop led to the birth of Miller Time, which led to the nationwide adoption of the phrase ‘If it’s in the arc, it’s out of the park’ in South Africa. It went from being a family mantra to a national refrain.
In 2016, Miller Time appeared to have lost its shine. Even when it was in the arc, Miller couldn’t hit it off the square. It looked like he had flown too close to the sun and finally flamed out. He had his worst year in the IPL. This was supposed to be the year that raised his value as a player. Kings XI Punjab (as Punjab Kings were called then) had made him captain and the year turned out to be a train wreck.
In the 14 games that he played, Miller averaged 16 at a strike rate of 123. This was -6.77 and -13.5 below other batters in the same position. Midway through that season, Miller had the captaincy stripped from him. The year was as tough off the field as it was on it, and perhaps one led to the other. Off the field, Miller was in and out of the hospital three times that season. It was the beginning of a difficult period in Miller’s career.
Between 2016 and 2019, he averaged 23 at a strike rate of 121 in the IPL. The true values look even worse. Miller was at -3.99 and -20, essentially scoring fewer runs and at a much slower pace than the normal batter in his positions. For a finisher, that is operating in liability territory. Miller was dragging Punjab back instead of helping them. They let him go in 2020 and Rajasthan Royals picked him up for that season but gave him a single appearance.
When the pandemic hit, Miller got a much-needed break to reset, the bulk of which he spent taking photographs of wild animals. He also revisited his approach against spin. In previous years, Miller had a trigger movement. He lifted his bat as he went forward and across with the front foot, often making the stride before the ball was bowled. That limited his options because once his leg was planted, he couldn’t go anywhere else besides backwards if he needed to put himself in a better position.
The trigger meant that he struggled with timing and couldn’t recreate the popping sound as he tried to hit the big shots.
When he emerged with the rest of the world from the Covid-19-forced break, Miller had shelved his trigger movement. He stood still at the crease, only raising his bat when the bowler was releasing the ball. With this approach, he eliminated the risk of locking himself into a position he couldn’t manoeuvre out of, without creating problems for himself. He could now move backwards and forwards as the situation required, and the late bat pickup helped him to time the ball better.
The technical change was accompanied by a shift in mindset. In the past, Miller waited for the bad balls and blocked the good ones. David Miller 2.0 looked to score from every delivery. His boundary percentage of 55 is an uptick from 33.6 between 2016 and 2021. His strike rotation metrics have also gone up, as evidenced by his dot ball percentage of 24.2 against tweakers. He is looking to score off every delivery against spin, rather than waiting for the bad ball.
Miller is not back to his best, he is better than his best in the IPL. This is Miller Time Reloaded. Against the Capitals, Miller creamed nine boundaries, six fours and three sixes. He faced two deliveries of spin before he slotted the ball into a gap that opened a path to the ropes, off Kuldeep Yadav. The shot has so much power that a top edge bounced once before a ball boy ran to retrieve it. He might not have middled it, but it made a sound, the cracking same one he fell in love with as a kid.
