Doffing the hat
A lot has happened. Sreesanth. Beer baths. Unprecedented turnarounds. The Gilly of old. Hussey (who will stop him?). Two giants, legends gone. (I will write on that later...along the same vein as this post is). The Pakistani farce. Impressive Aleem Dar. Dada. Zak.
I can go on...but, and this I am doing to stress what he means to me, I would like to write today about a cricketer who I have admired since I was playing school cricket. A guy who we used to talk of in the nets, whose stance we tried to ape, whose strokes we always tried but never succeeded in copying. Whose stillness of head we could never understand, even while dancing down the wicket and belting Harbhajan for sixes (how does he do it? we would ask...) This man is Damien Martyn.
It would be fair to say that there were long periods when Martyn struggled on the international stage. He was pushed to the opening slot, shuffled up and down the order but always kept coming back to be there as a slightly obscure but incredibly dangerous name in the middle of that bloody beauty of an Aussie batting order. His lowest point was last year's Ashes. One of his highest was his last tour of India. You may well be a little nonplussed at my waxing eloquent of this good but hardly great player. Allow me the purist's pleasures please.
Coming back to the discussions in the nets in those never ending summers of cricket camps and school cricket...as I've said before I went to a good cricket school. Hence a lot of focus on technique, approach, the little things. We would watch matches of Damien Martyn and double up in delight. His stillness of head while caressing the ball through the covers, his minimal footwork whether front or back to punch the ball through the off or on side, his incredible sense of where the gaps where and an uncommon ability to use his wrists (for an Aussie) all made him stand miles apart from almost any other batsman in world cricket. Very few compared. He wouldn't thrill you with big stroke making like a Punter or a BC Lara nor would he put you in a stupor with his rock solid technique like a Dravid or a Boycott. He was never an excess of anything. But he was almost flawless in everything.
There are two things for me which, even if I picked up a bat today to play on the streets or in a friendly I would try to instinctively imitate from this guy's batting:
His Stance: The next time you get a chance to see him bat in old videos, do look out for the stance. The ideal foot and a half apart, bat just in front of the right foot or sometimes behind. Just the right hunch. The head nicely tucked with the chin and the top of the handle in a straight line. No cricketing text book could have drawn a more perfect and elegant picture.
Time: One of the best ways of judging how good a player is with the bat is to get a sense of how much time he has to play his shots, attacking or defensive. With Martyn, barring the previous Ashes, I have never seen him hurried. Ever. Whether dancing down to belt Kumble over his head for sixes or gently steering the fastest bowlers through gully for four, this guy was blessed with more time than 5 batsman put together could have hoped for. Others who come close are Inzamam and Mohammed Yusuf. But not as gifted. Martyn seemed to make bowlers and the game look slow. Always.
Mr. Elegance. Take a bow you legend.