A.A. Thomson . How Ranji invented his leg glance
Cricketislife!
1954 peice.
---------
'..Ranji gained an introduction to Fenner's and there was bowled to by
relays of professionals, some of them the finest bowlers ofthe day, who
tried to rid him of his worst faults. In practice he was tireless
(C.B.Fry told me that one February day at Cambridge he saw Ranji, in fur
gloves, bat two hours before, and two hours after, lunch to four first
class bowlers.)
In trying to teach him to make sound defensive strokes (which he hated)
Dan Hayward, the leading professional, took the drastic step of pegging
down Ranji's right leg. Thus, as they say, is history born. Instead of
playing a defensive shot, as his mentor had intended, Ranji inclined his
sinuous body, flicked his supple wrists, and the ball went like a flash
to fine leg.
Thus the most elegant stroke known to cricket was born under hardship,
adversity and a self-imposed handicap.
About twenty years later, when he was less slim. less supple and far
past his glorious best, I sat as near as I could to sight screen behind
the bowler's arm at Lord's to watch if I could discover how this
historic stroke was made. The bowler, and undeservedly forgotten man
named Mignon, was bowling fast, but Ranji's leg glance was quicker-
quick enough, it seemed, to decieve the human eye. There was that
uncanny flick of wrists and the ball hit the pavilion rails at fine leg
like a tracer bullet. He did not appear to have hit it hard; it was
almost as if he had struck a match on it as it went by. It was not a
chancy deflection or a sneaky 'tickling down the corner'. The full blade
of the bat met the ball every time. It happened again and again.I was
dazzled. I still am.
--
Direct access to this group with http://web2news.com
http://web2news.com/?rec.sport.cricket
Cricketislife!
A extract from Cardus 1952 peice 'The Great Indians'. That Thompson and
this cardus has been extracted from the anthology 'An Indian Cricket
Omnibus edited by TGV and Ram Guha.
-----
Cardus
" Ranjitsinghji was the most original genius the game has so far known,
with the possible exception of Jessop. Your Bradmans, remarkable ebough,
are to be comprehended; their skill is rational, the sum-total of all
that has for years been developing in batsmanship, just as the 'Queen
Mary' is the sum-total of all that for years has been developing in the
science of ship building. 'Ranji' came from nowhere; his way of batting
was scarcely deducible from the technique known when he first began his
strange lovely flickerings and glidings. The left leg quietly put across
the right to a break-back from Mold, then lo! the ball was going to the
fine leg boundary, not with the weight or ponderousness of material
object, but as a ray of energy out of 'Ranji's' sinuous blade."