Tailenders

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A tailender is a term used in cricket to describe a batsmen who bats right at the endof theinnings, at no. 10 or 11 in the batting order. They are usually specialist bowlers (cricketers who only train on bowling to spearhead his teams bowling attack, whilst never practising their batting)so they often get out very easily. They are traditionally liable to be victims of spin bowling and are often trapped leg before wicket (LBW)

In a batting order there are different stages of batsmen, as shown below with the england batting order against Canada in the ICC cricket world cup 2007

                _
E Joyce          | = Opening batsmen       
M Vaughan       _|
                _
I Bell           |
K Pietersen      | = Middle order batsmen
P Collingwood    |
R Bopara        _|
                _
J Dalrymple      |
P Nixon          | = Lower order batsmen
L Plunkett      _|
                _
J Anderson       | = Tailenders        
M Panesar       _|  

Tailenders rarely get any runs, and so many teams choose to declare if they have a large score as they no that the tailenders will not make any runs and so they will give themselves more time to attempt and bowl the other team out. However you cannot declare in a one day international (ODI) so in the example above England could not have declared even if they had wanted to.

However, some tailenders can be quite good batsmen, and many can slog the ball a long way, but they are forced to bat down the order because of better batters up the order. Simon Jones is a batsmen who can slog the ball, but isforced to play as a tailender because of better batters.

This is also the case with Australia tailenders Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath.