In The Return of the Ashes, Mike Brearley describes the three-year-old son of friends who, by shaping left-handed, tugging a cap low and swinging vigorously to leg, made himself into a facsimile of Australia’s wicketkeeper Rod Marsh. Observation and emulation start in childhood, where the discovery of sport intersects with the world of make-believe. A game of repetition and repose, cricket offers ample scope for different methods and manners, quirks and quiddities. But it also follows in traditions well-worn. Then, after each stroke, the signature followings-through, including – when he leaves the ball – a gesture of the bat as if bestowing a knighthood, and a movement of the right arm as though slipping it into a sleeve.įar from random, it has a hint of the robotic Smith admits to being fussy and controlling, obsessed with his gear, superstitiously averse to anyone touching his bat during breaks in play, insistent on taping his laces tight to his shoes for neatness’s sake. Fewer still can have had such a repertoire of habitual gestures: the tactile preliminary inventory of his pads, gloves, helmet and trousers, bat held upright the stiff-legged double tap the bent-knee double dip. Gideon Haigh, writing in the 2018 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, examines the little quirks and mannerisms that cricketers carry – and what they reveal to us.įew batsmen in history have had such an idiosyncratic technique as Steve Smith, with his backlift more of a sidelift, his trigger movements as elaborate as loading a bolt-action rifle.
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