Skip to main content

Kohli and Smith, a la Tharoor


Now that Virat Kohli and Steve Smith are once again facing each other down under, a friend asked me to compare them—batting prowess and all. It was pretty late in the evening, and it would be a fair guess that I had guzzled quite a few shots more than what I should have. I cannot explain it, but somehow on such occasions a bit of Shashi Tharoor seeps into me.  

The comparison, as a result, went like hereunder;

Kohli is all brio prior to steadying himself to face the ball. Thereafter, an uncanny blend of organization and destruction, fricassees a delectable stew. Smith appears antsier with his outre and wacky routine at the crease. You agonize whether that is an idiosyncratic boondoggle or an act of some substance. For some recondite reason though that prefatory drouks quietude in him, and readies him to lacerate the bowler: the final product a non sequitur to what was transpiring when the bowler was readying himself for the run up to the crease. Or, is it a carefully woven phantasmagoria? 

Quite a study of contrasts. Kohli, more symphoric than Smith. Smith less aesthetic than Kohli. Kohli, all style and will carve out a shot that calls for picking up your jaw from the umbilicus level and thereabouts. A call for banning those kind of rubbery wrists that uncoil into a Russian knout is in order to restore an even playing field in the game of cricket. Don’t get me wrong though; he can at times commit inexplicable lapsus calamis in that last fraction of a second. 

Smith, all fidgety for some agonizing seconds, but transforming into a grace all his own and executing a shot from gauche positions that flies in the face of logic; an eldritch spectacle that will confuse your facial muscles on what configuration to assume—a cricketing patois of substance. I mean gripping the bat as he does he shouldn’t be able to effectuate those offside shots. 

You may consider taking your 12-year old through Kohli’s videos but will have to find a way to explain his short backlift and short follow through. Smith’s you will consider a tad too burlesque to qualify as batting touchstone, and will probably skip his videos.


***



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Vaccine Conundrum

A vaccine developed and ready to be injected in less than one year is a miracle that no research laboratory or pharmaceutical company would have dreamed of before 2020 began. Their track record has been that Jonas Salk’s lightning-fast development of polio vaccine in less than 4 years, and Ebola vaccine was approved in December 2019 after the first Ebola incidence was found in 1976, i.e. more than 40 years after.  From discovery to approved vaccination is a 10-year long process involving 2-5 years of discovery research, 2 years of pre-clinical period, 5 years of clinical development at its very best, 1-2 years of regulatory approval, and then of course comes in the manufacturer. The clinical development period has its 3 phases that is creating the buzz we hear day in and day out these days. Phase I is when researchers concentrate on the question, “Is it safe?” Phase II tries to establish whether the vaccine is activating an immune response or not. Then comes Phase III when they ans...
Post a Comment
Read more

Life Experiences

Like all my friends, I too was once a 17-year old awkward looking human in that shaded area when you are considered a naïve boy in certain estimations and a grown up man in the other situations. It leaves you so confused that you behave as neither of those. And I have also used the adjective ‘awkward’. It is because, at that age, facial hair appear to the extent that you are unsure whether to shave or not.    In those good old days nobody asked you, “Son, what do you want to be when you grow up?” You generally were preached to from the pulpit. Unsure about what future held, I had to sit through sessions where three, mostly idle, older cousins and uncles ruled the roost. The agenda invariably was what I should be doing with my life. My Dad, an engineer himself and rather a busy man, didn’t have time for idle chatter. He gave all of two minutes to the first of those meetings and announced that I should go for an engineering career at Roorkee. He walked away and chose not to part...
3 comments
Read more