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Watching America Watch Cricket
Topic Started: Nov 13 2015, 04:58 AM (58 Views)
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ESPN CricInfo: Watching America Watch Cricket

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Maybe it's the impending anniversary of Phillip Hughes' death. Or the daily drip of allegations from Southwark Crown Court, where Daniel Vettori and Brendon McCullum denounced their old pal Chris Cairns with such heart-rending regret. Or those endless replays of Ben Stokes all but impaling his right shoulder on the brick-hard Sharjah outfield. Or those paltry "crowds" in Brisbane and Mohali. Maybe it's just the greyer days and longer nights. Whatever.

This column has spent the past month seeking something, anything, to rouse something other than a grimace over matters cricketing. That it succeeded is mostly a reflection of the ease with which we can all be seduced by the smaller picture.

That one of the smile-inducers was the sight of Shane Warne and Brian Lara having at each other on a baseball ground in New York should be reason enough for one hearty cheer. That the other was Adil Rashid, the first English leggie for 80 years to pluck a five-fer from a Test overseas, ought to justify a second, a third and possibly even a fourth. A fifth would have been in order had the boy Srinivasan not been due to be replaced as ICC chairman by Giles Clarke.

The late, great Alan Ross, poet, magazine editor and long-time cricket correspondent for the Observer, captured the visual allure of flannelled tomfoolery more memorably than most, and nowhere, not even in his delicious rhapsody to England's most enchanting batsman, "Watching Gower Bat", did he capture it more vividly than in the following lines:

Leg-spinners pose problems much like love,
Requiring commitment, the taking of a chance.
Half-way deludes; the bold advance.
Right back, there's time to watch
Developments, though perhaps too late.


The title of the poem is "Watching Benaud Bowl", and while it may be somewhat premature to propose that Rashid will one day inspire such luscious lines, this column, having been well and truly smitten by the Yorkshireman's modus operandi, freely confesses to being hopelessly and irretrievably biased.

Beautiful bowling actions are even more indelible than their batting counterparts: more athletic, more pronounced, even lavish, in their movements; less textbookish, more distinctive. Unanimity, moreover, is more common than might be envisaged. This may simply be because, above all, the most aesthetically pleasing actions must look easy, endlessly repeatable, natural. No mean feat given the ultimate truth about propelling five-and-a-half-ounce cork-and-leather spheroids for a living, which, for fast bowlers in particular, is as unnatural as any sporting act gets.

And that's why, even though taste is always hugely subjective (in this column's eyes, Wasim Akram surged in too hurriedly to look effortless), Michael Holding has been universally hailed for the past three decades, quite properly, as the quintessence of bowling as art form. It was all in that Rolls Royce of a run-up: silky-smooth, eerily calm, momentum gathered imperceptibly, deceptive to the final coil and snap. And just as left-handers are generally more sensual than right for the simple reason that most of us are right-handers (think Gower, Lara, Pollock and Sobers), so left-armers hold a disproportionate number of places in the upper echelons of the Action Hall of Fame, led by Bishan Bedi, Alan Davidson and Bernard Julien.

It is wristspinners, nonetheless, who dominate the walls of this column's internal gallery. Admittedly, there was a false start. Far too unorthodox - not to say wooden-jointed and almost timid of approach - was the first candidate, Johnny Gleeson, the folded-finger Jack Iverson doppelganger who befuddled Geoff Boycott among others during the 1968 Ashes (cue one of the less complimentary stories about our Geoffrey: when asked by the freshly arrived Basil D'Oliveira for some pointers about tackling Gleeson, he obliged by telling him to work it out for himself).

Thus it was that, when Pakistan toured Blighty in 1971, Intikhab Alam and Mushtaq Mohammad became the gallery's first acquisitions. They might as well have been joined at the hip. Both were jaunty, bubbly and bouncy, forever flexing a devilish wrist as they headed creasewards, making it abundantly plain to the batsman that they had far too many tricks for him. Mushie had the longer run-up, a vaguely spidery but generally uplifting thing; better yet was Inti, a more corpulent figure, who almost scampered in, and delivered the ball with a flourish befitting a magician pulling a dove from his sleeve. A love affair had begun.

Next up, that same summer, was the inimitable Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, a medium-pacer until the moment before he let go. To learn that a) his bowling arm had been withered by polio, and b) he'd downed a scotch before bewildering England at The Oval, was all a teenager needed to develop and nourish a lasting crush.

As the years wore on, others joined the gallery: Richie himself (via video cassette), Kerry O'Keeffe, Bob Holland, Ian Salisbury, Mushtaq Ahmed, Danish Kaneria, Brad Hogg, Amit Mishra - all singular and indelible of mode. Not Anil Kumble - too tall, too angular, too mechanical. And not, as yet, Lionel Messi's double, aka Yasir Shah, who spurts in rather too quickly and anonymously for these excessively fussy taste buds. If you want to be remembered for something other than mere wickets, dear boy, do slow down. We want to appreciate you.

Which brings us back to Rashid. Yes, what emerges from that right paw isn't always as potent as intended, but give him time (and more sessions with His Shaneness). More importantly, just about everything that precedes delivery is perfect: fluent, fluid, loose-limbed, exquisitely curvy, light of touch - Benaud with knobs on. Never mind the Long Room, the Louvre awaits.

-Read more: http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/939143.html?
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