Man and superman

[Creag]

This is a long article. It is beautifully written and well worth reading all the way through. I have posted a couple of extracts from it to "whet your appetite". Enjoy

AB de Villiers may come across as something of a fictional superhero on the field. But his relatively underplayed fallibility off it shows that he is human too

Unlike Hashim Amla, who seems to barely move a muscle - and never changes his gloves - to pile up his mountains of runs, or Faf du Plessis, who will bat all day and more and to hell with how many runs he does not score, or Quinton de Kock, whose batting is orthodoxy on steroids, de Villiers is a mad inventor. Unlike Dr Frankenstein's, however, his creations are seamless and scar-free.

From the time the ball leaves the bowler's hand to the moment it needs to be dealt with, de Villiers is capable of mentally flipping through even the most modern coaching manual, choosing two or three options, deciding against any or all of them, and fashioning something bespoke instead; something that looks like it has been part of cricket for much longer than the nanosecond he has taken to devise it.

He does it all without arrogance, without showing off. A small example, extreme in its own way: after lunch on day three of the third Test against West Indies at Newlands in January, de Villiers whipped Sulieman Benn behind square leg and deep into the outfield.

On his way back to the crease to complete a second run, he stopped some three metres short of his ground. A spot of disturbed pitch had caught his eye. So he paused to prod it down. The throw was already arcing from the outfield towards the wicketkeeper when de Villiers interrupted his return. He knew this, and still he stood there as if tending his front lawn on a lazy Sunday. But he also knew, by some vectorial instinct, exactly how long he needed to make it back without causing undue alarm. He did.

Few in the crowd reacted to this blatant violation of the received wisdom of "Cricket: How To Play". Perhaps they did not see it. Perhaps they had seen it - or something like it - too many times before to pay it much heed. We are dealing with AB de Villiers, after all and this is too easy.

Read the rest by Telford Vice here: http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/826649.html

 

[Wall]

Fantastic read!