Its Saturday evening and a special treat for sports fans. Two high-intensity Test cricket encounters, Manchester City and Liverpool are going to be in action in the English Premier League and Barcelona take on Athletic Club in a thrilling La Liga encounter.
As the Ashes did an Eden, I watched Travis Head do to England a repeat of the 2023 ICC ODI World Cup final, as Ravi Shastri said, “Plunged my country into silence”. I sat on my oversized white sofa and compared Head to a certain Tasmanian stalwart who opened the innings for Australia and fancied a similar walrus moustache. David Boon was not flamboyant by contemporary standards. Stocky, stoic, and fiercely resolute, he embodied the archetype of Australian batting in its most unadorned form.
His 174 at the SCG in 1989 against the West Indies or his heroic tour of England in 1989 marked as much by folklore as by runs … spoke of a batter who thrived not in spectacle but in survival and stubborn accumulation.
Technically, they are worlds apart. Boon was bottom-hand dominant, compact, economically moving. Head is expansive, bat-swinging, kinetic. Yet psychologically, they live in the same house. Both possess that distinct Australian batting DNA, an innate disdain for intimidation and a comfort in discomfort. The ability to look fast bowling in the eye and not blink.
My colleague Bharath Ramaraj poked a pin into my whimsical musings as he explained how the modern-day batters move to the on-side, expose their off and sometimes middle stump (like Abhishek Sharma), teasing the bowlers, staying on the leg-side and then tonk the ball over the field. That’s modern-day batting for you. “Boon and Head are chalk and cheese” he said.
I tuned into the debate on the RevSportz channel and watched with fascination as I heard my colleague Shamik Chakrabarty lament the demise of the red-ball batter. Interestingly, he went on to talk about how the genuine all-rounder has also given way to players with batting abilities who can bring in utility services in the form of bowling!
In dismay, I turned to other sports news and read about Lakshya Sen clinching his first title of the season defeating Japan’s Yushi Tanaka in the men’s singles final of the Australian Open Super 500 in Sydney.
While that brought some cheer, I remeneisced Robert Lewandosky’s clinical finish from inside the penalty box, placing the ball shaprly into the left side of the goal in Barcelona’s 4-0 win against Athletic Club. This was his eighth goal of the season and makes him a key member of the Barca outfit.
Meanwhile, the Duabi run takes place this wekeend and the sight of Sheikh Zayed road transforming from a no-nonsense commercial highway into a veritable festival of good cheer will be quite something. Dubai’s transformation on health, wellness and productivity finds new avenues.
I did not expect the Premier League matches to turn out the way they did. City and Liverpool suffered shock defeats. Nottingham Forest moved out of the relegation zone with a 3-0 win over Liverpool at Anfield and at St James’ Park, Harvey Barnes scored twice to take Newcastle United to victory over Manchester City.
Back to cricket. And the Eden Test showed us that Indian batters do not know how to counter spin of good, but maybe, not great quality. The advent of technology in the form of DRS has made spinners look to speed up their deliveries and perhaps eschew flight, loop and turn to focus on speed and hitting the pads thus gaining an LBW decision in their favour. This is the era of the Pad Piercer and the IP for this terminology belongs to our own Travis Head of RevSportz, Bharath Ramaraj!
Isn’t it quite an irony that the DRS tech involving ultra edge and ball tracking came in to solve a human decision-making lacunae and now that same tech has resulted in shaping the way the game is played itself. And so if the slog sweep is an answer to the Pad Piercer, then maybe we will soon have tech to study not just the shot, but combine with the mid-wicket field position to show how the combo leads to dismissals. Technology and technique comes a full circle!
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