Follow Your Heart. Lead Your Mind. You'll find a window everywhere.

Friday, July 17, 2015

Steve Smith's class is his cognitive ability of doing great, responsibly.

Considering cricket is just a number game is definitely odd. But, when a leg-spinner, who used to bat a bit, turned a No.3 batsman scores 215 at Lord's in the Ashes against a formidable English bowling attack, of course you are bound to sit and watch, rather look into the numbers.

More so, just in case you know how to weed flukes of gold out of flakes of silver. And then you get convinced that no magic or miracle in the world can help a 26+ cricketer, constantly, to pile up 2653 runs in 56 innings off 29 tests with 9 hundreds and 11 fifties and an average of 55.27... excluding the lavishness of batting which has taken place at the Mecca of cricket. 

Hail the great (in making), Steven Smith of Australia, whose greatness is his 'cognitive ability' leading to 'commosense' which he exploits like anything to manipulate his technique in accordance with a situation.



Call it temperament, talent or smartness that he was born with to overcome his own shortcomings in order to outsmart any bowler in the world for that matter.

In the first test at Cardiff, in the first innings Smith threw his wicket away, while in the second innings, he was outfoxed and dismissed, for which, his technical fault was more responsible than the bowler's mastery. 

He stayed rooted to the crease with the heel of his back-foot outside the leg-stump and offered literally a no-shot but just a half-cock prod with a tight-bottom-hand to get himself caught behind in the second slip where Bell took a comfortable catch to complete the formality. 



Perhaps that was THE wicket, England was looking for to make inroads into the Aussie batting to win the test, eventually. 

As "greatness comes with greater responsibility", it won't be too much of a speculation to guess that the loss hurt Smith badly. 

So, little surprise an all new Steve came out to bat at Lord's who was not only decisive on his feet but also at his cunning best to make all the English bowlers bowl exactly where he wanted them to bowl.

He began to shuffle across to deny the pace cum seam brigade of England of a good view of his off-stump. 

As a result, he did two things: 1) He started to come closer to the outgoing deliveries and 2) He made bowlers try different things like bowling short; bowling round the wicket; or bowling into him onto his pads.

Plus, straightway, he was dancing down the crease against Moeen Ali, making the off-spinner bowl short or the drifter at the cost of nagging loops in the air.

However, it's to be noted, while playing Ali (look at the third picture from the top), Smith was not shuffling across to free his arms to play the horizontal shots at will. 









  

Yes, he was dropped once, while he couldn't shuffle across properly to close the angle of the ball leaving him, by Bell who failed to bring his fingers underneath the ball to hold onto a difficult chance, but that noway undermines Smith's smartness with the willow. 




In short, not everyone can become a Steven Smith just by scoring runs; however, a Steve Smith becomes only when a cricketer applies his brain over his brawn because cricket is a mind-game after all that makes greats who carry the legacy of this great game forward... responsibly.