Bottom-handedness

This morning, I was watching the highlights of AB de Villiers's double hundred in the Ahmedabad Test against India last year, and I realised that I've never really liked watching him play. To my eyes, that knock contained not a single memorable shot.
There were a lot of great shots, don't get me wrong, remarkable in their bat-speed - his bat traced an arc that went beyond a full circle when he cover-drove Irfan Pathan, and a slog-sweep off Harbhajan Singh, which sailed well over the roof of the stadium, sent him tumbling onto his back in his follow-through.
But they made little impression on me. Watching his hundred at Perth was much the same - I instead became a Hashim Amla fan after his 53 in that same run chase.
Maybe it's because de Villiers's style isn't idiosyncratic enough. He's one of those gifted athletes to whom hitting the ball has come too easy.
Adam Gilchrist is similar - during that century in the 2007 World Cup final, I was struck by how every single shot he played was the result of exactly the same bat-swing, only directed from different hitting zones to different parts of the ground. At five, facing a tennis ball thrown by his dad, he might have swung his junior-size bat the same way, and middled everything.
Free your arms and swing through the line - it's possibly the cleanest, most efficient way to hit a ball, and de Villiers and Gilchrist discovered this almost organically - I conjecture - early in their lives. Ally this to their natural hand-eye co-ordination, and you get two guys who can strike a cricket ball squeaky-clean and score quickly nearly always, with lots of fours and sixes. They leave me cold, sadly.
It's the opposite with some batsmen who are in the mainstream considered ungainly, or even, as JRod would say, Probots. I love watching Paul Collingwood and Simon Katich bat, for instance - there's a structure to what these guys do, a way they approach an innings that you can take something out of. For instance, I recovered from a terrible slump in batting form in underarm Tests by restricting my backlift and follow-through like Collingwood.
But it isn't just that - I genuinely find them attractive to watch, right from the way they shuffle across their creases, to how crisply they clip the ball off their legs with minimal backlift and follow-through.
But this isn't a celebration of hard-earned batting techniques. I only observe how one style of batting doesn't press the right buttons for me. I'm as thrilled by VVS Laxman or Mohammad Yousuf or Sanath Jayasuriya as anyone else.
Having written all this, I detect a pattern - hell, I love watching bottom-handed players, or players executing the great bottom-hand-dominant shots - Gordon Greenidge's square cut, or Rahul Dravid piercing the midwicket-mid-on gap. Batsmen like Gilchrist and de Villiers have taken the celebration of the unencumbered top-hand-controlled bat-swing to its extreme, and the resultant style doesn't warm my heart, much as I try.
It perturbs me when coaches tell you that your top hand is the only one that matters, and even advocate that naturally right-handed batsmen become left-handers early in life - try telling that to Vijay Hazare, whose hands, according to Raj Singh Dungarpur, "moved up and down the handle like a flute player."

How do you beat Pakistan?

Simple. Bowl badly when Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf are batting together.Younis's second-wicket partnership of 200 with Fawad Alam in the second Test against Sri Lanka at the P. Sara Oval was his third 200-plus partnership in a losing cause. The only other batsman in Test history to figure in three losing 200-plus stands? Mohammad Yousuf.
Younis and Yousuf are the only pair to figure twice on the list of losing 200-plus stands. The highest partnership ever in a lost Test? Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf, 363 for the third wicket against England at Headingley in 2006.

Background music

Not too long ago, Andrew Flintoff walked in to bat during England's first innings at Cardiff. As he marked his guard, a bugler in the crowd bugled the Flintstones tune.

... Let's ride with the family down the street,
Through the courtesy of Fred's two feet...

Perfect.

This afternoon, Mohammad Yousuf repeatedly eased threes through the leg side on a slow Sinhalese Sports Club outfield. As usual, there was a brass band in the background, belting out not baila but Bollywood, and

Ye shaam mastani, madhosh kiye jaaye...

Just the right kind of tune for Yousuf's languid style.