By Ajeetesh Sandhu
A winner on the Asian and Japan golf tour, Ajeetesh Sandhu explains how cricketers easily pivot to golf due to the inherent similarities.
The first thing I think of when I watch hold his finish after a six isn’t cricket. It’s golf. For a brief moment, the swing, the balance, even the rhythm feel like they belong on a fairway rather than a cricket ground.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say the two are identical, but there are passages of play where the overlap is impossible to ignore. I noticed this even when I saw Vaibhav Sooryavanshi hitting for a six the other day in the Indian Premier League. The flow of the bat, the arc of the swing…all very close to a golf swing.
Every time a batsman strikes the ball cleanly and lets the bat flow through the line, there’s a certain freewheeling quality through impact. That’s what catches my eye. The bat, much like a golf club, is released at speed but without tension. In those moments, the connection between the two sports feels very real.
For me, though, the similarities aren’t just visual. They’re deeply rooted in how the body works. In golf, once we complete our backswing, the first move is initiated by the hips. That’s where the power comes from. The hips lead, the shoulders follow, and then the arms and hands come through, delivering the club into the ball. It’s a sequence where each part of the body plays its role at precisely the right time.
Cricket, especially when you look at lofted shots or clean hits down the ground, follows a similar pattern. The hips start the movement, the body unwinds, and all the energy is transferred into the bat at the moment of impact.
When cricketers pick up a golf club, you begin to notice the different habits. Cricketers, with their incredible hand-eye coordination, make contact with the ball quite naturally. But there are also tendencies that don’t translate as smoothly.
The most noticeable challenge is how tough it is for them to release the club. A cricket bat is heavier, more solid in the hands, while a golf club feels comparatively light. For someone who has spent years swinging a bat, the club can feel almost too flimsy. And because of that, there’s a tendency to hold on to it through impact rather than letting it release. What that does is shape the swing in a very particular way. It starts to resemble a cover drive. The result is that the ball often drifts to the right, especially for a right-handed golfer.
If I were to suggest a way to bridge that gap, I’d actually start with something quite simple: the weight of the club. Giving them a slightly heavier club in the beginning might help replicate the feel of a cricket bat. It allows them to trust the motion a bit more, to understand how the club should move through impact without feeling like they’re losing control of it.
What’s interesting is that the exchange doesn’t just go one way. There are elements of golf that can just as easily feed back into cricket. Timing, for instance, is everything in golf. So, the entire swing becomes a process of building energy gradually and releasing it at exactly the right moment.
It’s not about being completely still, but about coiling and uncoiling. There’s a long backswing, a clear change of direction, and then an acceleration through the ball. Everything peaks at impact. Until that moment, you’re simply loading energy. Waiting, loading, releasing.
That sense of timing can be invaluable in cricket as well. If a batsman is able to align their movement so that everything comes together at the point of contact, it can make a significant difference. At the highest level, even the smallest improvement in timing can elevate performance.
From what I’ve seen, I feel Abhishek Sharma would have a very good golf swing. I think left-handers, anyway, have a lot of fluidity and, frankly, I’ve always had a big bias towards left-handers. I feel like they’ve got a lot of rhythm and are more free-flowing, whereas the right-handed golfers and cricketers can get a little bit more technical. I like the flow of Abhishek’s bat. It is very uniform, and I think that’s why he also hits the ball so well. It’s very easy for that to get transferred over, even in golf. Sometimes, all it takes is that one image, like Abhishek holding his finish after a six, to see it.
As told to Mihir Vasavda
