Ugly is the new elegant
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What if, all this while, we’ve all been getting it completely wrong? What if each and every one of us were wrong about our idea, interpretation and projection of the art of batting and how it should be done - all along?
We live in a generation that is obsessed with ‘hacks’ - be it travel hacks, cooking hacks, diet hacks or even health hacks. Take the example of ‘Travel Hacks’: There are at least a zillion tutorials on YouTube explaining a million different techniques on how to fold a T-shirt - from the ‘army fold’ to the ‘two-second fold’ to the ‘regular fold’. Then comes the part about actually packing the clothes. You can either roll them, fold them or stack them up. Anything and everything works and at the end of the day, it all comes down to the individual’s convenience and what works the best for them.
But somehow, we’ve been taught not to do the same with batting. There has always been a preconceived notion of what ‘pure batting’ or who a ‘perfect batsman’ is, and anyone and everyone who does not fit the bill and is divergent is isolated - sometimes even abandoned - and chastised. Anything other than an orthodox technique - front shoulder pointing down the wicket, head facing the bowler, weight equally balanced, bat near the back toe, slight crouch of the body with a vertical backlift as the bowler steams into bowl - is considered as blasphemy.
And these thoughts were put in our minds from a very young age. Growing up, as kids, be it as an aspiring cricketer or a viewer, the thought of conventionality equating to correctness was implanted in our minds, so much so that we started associating excellence to elegance. Anything that was not ‘textbook’ or pleasing to the eye, no matter how effective it was, was branded incorrect, under-appreciated and at times, even condemned.
But what if beauty and elegance were redefined? What if the whole concept of who a ‘good batsman’ is, was rewritten? What if the term ‘technically correct’ was erased from the dictionary of the sport? We don’t have to wonder, for it has already been done. Not just Test cricket, but the whole art of batting is currently witnessing a revolution. Steve Smith, Rory Burns, Dean Elgar and Dominic Sibley are currently leading a rebellion against the purists who have oppressed elegantly-abled batsmen for years, decades and centuries.
When Smith, in the Old Trafford Test last year, hanging on the backfoot without proper weight transfer, drove a Jofra Archer half-volley through extra-cover for a boundary, Ian Botham on air, uttered in disbelief, “That is just……...wrong.” Perhaps that is when Botham realized that there was no ‘wrong’ anymore. Steve Smith’s cover-drive was and is wrong, and so is Rory Burns’ stance and head position, Dean Elgar’s backlift and Dominic Sibley’s shuffle and feet positioning - fundamentally, technically and stylistically. You will not find them in the textbook. But it doesn’t matter. What they’ve achieved is the eradication of the term ‘wrong’ from the sport’s glossary, for it doesn’t matter how do you do it as long as the end goal is met.
Not only have these batsmen made their idiosyncrasies their identities, but they have reminded every viewer and follower of the sport the one aspect of batting that over the years, has somehow been forgotten - there is nothing more important than runs and it doesn’t matter how you get them. They’ve reminded that It’s okay to play and miss as long as you forget the previous delivery and move on, it’s okay to look like a walking wicket as long as you actually don’t throw your wicket away, it’s okay to play a pull-shot off the front foot and a cover drive off a backfoot, it’s okay to look like an LBW candidate as long as you don’t let the ball hit your pad and it’s okay to score an ugly fifty in the shadows of a teammate’s eloquent thirty.
Kurt Streeter of New York Times had an interesting analogy to describe Daniil Medvedev, who is arguably the most unorthodox player in modern Tennis: “Stylistically Daniil Medvedev plays like dude at your local park who taught himself to play at 24 and then crushes all comers relying on strategy he learned as intramural ping pong champ — only at grand slam tennis level.”
You look at these batsmen and you feel the same. There is no way that they should be successful at the international level doing what they’re doing, or at least that’s what we’ve been told so. But what they’ve shown us is the fact that batting, as much as it is an art that is done with a bat in hand, has all to do with the mind. They’ve rewritten the rules of the textbook, but more importantly, have shown the world that self-belief and mental strength trumps everything else.
The sample size might be a miniscule and the number of players might be just a handful, but the revolution is real and the impact these players are making is widespread. In the years to come, kids at the grassroots level won’t be afraid to express themselves, for they know that their coaches won’t lambast them for not following the rulebook. As a matter of fact, there are already young players of the ‘heterodox’ prototype coming through, with Victoria’s Jake Fraser-McGurk serving as a prime example. Chances are that we might see a fair few in the forthcoming Under-19 World Cup. Perhaps, a certain Shivnarine Chanderpaul would have wished to have existed in this era, for his greatness would have received the recognition it deserved.
In a sport that has grown worshipping Sachin’s straight drives, Ponting’s pull shots and has equated greatness and godliness to grace, Smith, Burns, Elgar and Sibley have shown that there’s an inherent beauty in being ‘ugly’ and ‘agricultural’. Efficiency and effectiveness - and not elegance - defines greatness and after all, if there are a hundred ways to put a piece of cloth into your suitcase, there sure must be more than one way to go about the art of batting.
