In Brearley's phrase, "Here I felt my way into Rice's body and the shape of the shot. I sensed there might be a thick outside edge, and I pictured the ball flying to a deep wide slip, perhaps 20 yards back. I put Clive Radley in this position, and shortly afterwards it went straight to him at catching height. When something similar happened in the second innings, this time on the leg side, Rice thought there was something magical about my captaincy; in fact, it was a mixture of bodily intuition laced with a great deal of luck."
Brearley is describing something rarely discussed in a sporting context: the practical value of imagination. It transcended merely "visualising" a probable outcome. Brearley used his imagination, as a novelist might, to bring to life a very unlikely potential scenario. "Many years later," he added, "I saw a film of Bushmen hunting a deer on foot. As they followed the tracks of the deer in the stony ground, the hunters 'became' the deer, using the identification to find the faint footprints in the ground; they shaped themselves into the way of moving and likely course of the deer."
In spite of Cricinfo-led statistical, boring, obscure, monotonous, jejune geek-festing the following two books remain classic in Cricket where pages are HARDLY filled with sheer, dry stats. Highly recommend the first one for any cricket enthusiast which marries a lad's imagination.
Fortifies the maxim that it's better to be oneself than follow roads traversed by others. :-]
it's fascinating how India,Srilanka & now NZ dominating England,Aus & SA in ODIs although they were so in competitive against the same teams in Tests.
What do we learn from this? are the weaker test teams better in 50 over game ? same thing happened to us,after losing the Test series to WI we won the ODI series.
very interesting indeed.
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Bracewell is understood to have suffered a cut during or after a party before joining up with the New Zealand squad in Dunedin. NZC are trying to determine the exact circumstances and find out if alcohol played any role.