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.

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