Lanning’s Law asserts that:

It’s not a good shot if it goes straight to the fielder.

(I’m sure it isn’t a totally original thought; but Anna Lanning’s statement of it, attributed to her sister Meg, is the clearest expression of it that I’ve heard in 40 years of watching cricket.)

But in a 31-run cameo, off just 23 balls, in the Middlesex v Surrey London Cup at Radlett last night, Surrey’s left-handed No. 3 Aylish Cranstone set out to prove that the opposite might just also be true.

It started with a cut – chipped upishly into the area backward of square on the off-side, covered by two fielders. I gasped, waiting for the catch, but instead the ball found the gap between gully and point, and a single was chalked into the scorebook. Turning to my companion, I grimaced: “Lucky!”

A few balls later, Cranstone got fortunate again – a drive flew into the breeze between midwicket and mid on; but it wasn’t until the lightning struck a third time, through vacant extra cover, that it hit me: this wasn’t luck at all – Cranstone was perfectly comfortable playing the ball in the air, because she knew where it was going – into the gaps bisecting the fielders, wherever they were, off side or on!

In fact, Cranstone wasn’t really batting with her bat at all, but with her brain – and doing so quite exquisitely, running the Middlesex fielders all around the park, the ball dancing between them, sometimes just trickling to the boundary as they chased in vain. Even when Middlesex captain Natasha Miles reset the field, all it did was open up new spaces for Cranstone to play with.

I’ll be the first to admit that Cranstone’s shots don’t look “all that” – she doesn’t have the power of a Nat Sciver or the timing of a Sarah Taylor… though to be fair in the latter case, who does?

But if Lanning’s Law is right – it’s not a good shot if it goes straight to the fielder – then perhaps what Cranstone proved last night is that the opposite is also true:

If it finds the perfect gap… it is a good shot!