When Josh Philippe hit “thousands and thousands of balls”

Narratives can be deceiving. A story that has only highs is often a sign of incompleteness, either through deliberation or ignorance. Our storybooks, the movies, novels tend to have a “happily ever after” theme to them. Such a trend is even more prominent when it comes to the documentation of a sportsperson’s life. If the story of Josh Philippe is to be gazed upon from the eyes of a mistaken commoner, beginning as a Perth Scorcher player to ending up playing alongside his idol Steve Smith for the Sydney Sixers, the narrative seems extremely pleasing, one that would fit into the mould of what would be considered “perfect”. However, life is laced with imperfections, and it is amidst these ruins that the greatest stories emerge.

If we were to revisit Josh Philippe’s BBL season today, a statistic deeming him the highest run-scorer for his team the Sydney Sixers, lofty words from his role model Steve Smith, and a masterclass in T20 batting on the biggest stage, the BBL final would sound like an aisle smooth as silk to the finish line. However, the going was not always easy. As is life, the season was studded with highs and lows. If one was to look at scores of 8, 6, 7, 1 and 10 in five consecutive innings, it would appear hard to accept they all came in a phase of Philippe’s 487-run BBL season, one in which he outscored every other Sixers’ batsmen, and was only outdone by two others in the entire league.

What Philippe experienced was a classic mid-season slump. Now, adversity could have taken him in one of two directions. He could have either crumbled under the pressure of being unable to shake off his bad form; or, as it happened, Philippe knuckled down and came out of it with a bang. Every individual is different, and not everyone can follow a set pattern for success. For Philippe, it was training harder, hitting “thousands and thousands of balls”, much like his idol Steve Smith, that pulled him out of the rubble. "To be honest I've hit thousands and thousands of balls, I've hit so many balls in the last few weeks. The thing with T20 cricket is when you miss out a few times it feels like it all happens so quickly," Philippe told ESPNcricinfo in an interview dating back to January this year. "We've had so many games close together, just the last few weeks where I didn't get too many it felt like it all happened at once and I just kept backing myself, hitting a lot of balls, and hoping it would work out which it kind of did, which is nice,” said Philippe in almost a modest sense.

Identifying where he was going wrong, and changing his approach also helped Philippe, who said, "In the last couple of games I've just taken a few more balls to get myself in then starting to go, but sometimes you are chasing massive scores and don't have time to do that. It's all about reading the game, reading the situation, and the more you play the better you get at that.”

If popular narratives were to be believed, life would follow a smooth, predictable curve. But, it is a jarring oscillation between the ebbs and flows, often in unpredictable frequencies. Adversity is inevitable, even to the greats among us who have managed to overcome them, but the reaction to adversity often goes a long way in deciding where we end up. Joshua Ryan Philippe has displayed the right mindset to overcome any obstacle thrown in his way in abundance in his young career.