Who Wants to be a Batsman? The Analyst Unveils the Secrets of Batting. By Simon Hughes. Simon & Schuster; 280 pages; £18.99.
NOTHING in sport emulates life and death so acutely as a cricket innings. A batsman, unlike a baseball hitter, usually has one chance to shine. If he messes up, by misjudging the flight or turn of the ball infinitesimally, he may be doomed, his match effectively over. And if he errs against one of the faster bowlers, that may be the least of his problems: cricket balls are smaller, harder and heavier than baseballs and aimed to harm. Bavalan Pathmanathan, a 24-year-old British club cricketer, was the latest batsman killed; he died after being struck over the heart on July 5th.
No wonder it takes a rare character to succeed in batting, as Simon Hughes, a former English professional cricketer, observes. His boyhood dream, from which he never awoke, was to succeed himself. But despite a fierce desire to make runs, he rarely did; he earned his crust as a bowler, a less glamorous calling. Why? he asks.
What follows is a well-observed analysis of batting—and life. Mr Hughes’s poor scores were not merely for want of talent. He had good enough eyesight and sharp enough reflexes to hit the world’s best bowlers out of the ground, on occasion. Indeed, the greatest of all batsmen, Sir Donald Bradman, had...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1Hi2rmO
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