Sri Lanka and India are this summer’s touring sides – and across the land cricket commentators are already licking their lips. Because there’s nothing like the sight of Asian teams to get pundits reaching for their store of cliches and going into platitude overdrive.
The reason? A combination of reverence and political correctness. Analysts are congenitally awestruck by the exotic mystique associated with subcontinental cricket, whatever the reality. And they can’t find it in themselves either to put the boot in, even when justified, or take the mickey – like they might with South Africans or Australians. The result, frankly, is a bit arse-licky. And that’s just Mark Nicholas.
So here are some of the epithets you’ll hear trotted out ad infinitum this summer – and what they really mean.
Mercurial In other words – unorthodox, charismatic, capable of surprises. Often applied to Murali and Lasith Malinga. If an English player has these traits, he’s described instead as ‘a bit of a character’, or ‘sometimes good but often balls it up’.
Wily For example, Kumar Sangakkara or Sanath Jayasuriya. Essentially, a euphemism for ‘good’. Can also imply a tactical cuteness, which, if we were talking about Ricky Ponting, means ‘cheating’.
Wristy All Asian players must be labelled ‘wristy’, even if they actually bat like Glenn McGrath, or Ian Austin in a pub match. Often interchanged with various ‘naturals’: eg ‘naturally graceful’, ‘naturally elegant’, or ‘natural sense of timing’. In a similar vein…
Natural player of spin By law, seemingly, every Indian, Pakistani or Sri Lankan batsman can play Shane Warne in handcuffs and a blindfold. And admittedly, there was some truth in that. Conveniently forgotten when Ashley Giles had Tendulkar stumped in 2002, or when Michael Vaughan bowled him through the gate.
The converse applies to the bowlers. If Monty Panesar had been born in Madras, he’d be ‘unerringly accurate, persistent and patient, capable of infinitely subtle variations’. As he was actually born in Luton, however, he ‘can only bowl one delivery’.
Learned his cricket on the dusty streets of Kolkata There’s nothing commentators love more than myth-making. And according to them, every Asian cricketing hero was one of an inpoverished cobbler’s twenty seven children, and honed his skills with a fence-post and taped-up tennis ball alongside a ragged-trousered cadre of extras from Slumdog Millionaire. You can’t help but feel Indian society must be a little more complex than that. But you can understand the temptation for pundits to self-indulge: how exotic are the backstories of England’s players? ‘Born and raised in Milton Keynes, the son of a quantity surveyor, with A levels in geography and business studies…’
Maxie Allen
You can’t use Tendulkar getting out to Giles or Vaughan as an example. His speciality is getting out to mediocre spin bowlers.