The Myth of the Elegant Left-Hander!!

Inspired from Suresh Menon, Cricinfo

This is a very interesting topic, one me who is a staunch admirer of Left Handers, is forced to accept that the whole gaga about a left hander’s grace is a myth. I read this article “The myth of the elegant left hander” on Cricnfo, realizing how foolish I was to say that left-handers are more elegant than right handers. Maybe they are, but are the right handers any behind. Let’s find out.

As batsmen discover new strokes, new ways to get to the boundary (or into the stands), some of the old ones seem to have fallen off the charts, taking with them the words used to describe these. We no longer read of the elegant late cut or the stylish leg glance; instead we have the effective upper cut or the productive reverse sweep. It is not that grace has deserted the game and batsmen have put efficiency before charm, but in recent years a Michael Clarke has become the exception, a visually pleasing batsman incapable of playing an ugly stroke.

It’s astonishing to realize that there are innumerable right handed batsmen to name but none could be picked and compared over the last several years. Were they all living in the shadows of our ignorance? His prodigy, Sachin Tendulkar the master from Mumbai was never classified as elegant or graceful, but rather was compared to greats like Richards, Bradman and their stroke play. Are we as cricket lovers, fare enough to think that left handers are more graceful and elegant than the righties?...A Mark Waugh was in several ways more graceful than any average left hander. But then, why this perception of lefties being more elegant and classy, let us dig a little deeper.

If you are a left-hander, it is automatically assumed that you are graceful, artistic, and delicate and all those wonderful things that romantics like to burden cricket with. This is one of the game's most common myths - that left-handedness is by itself the reason for grace and elegance.

According to statics, around 10% of the population and perhaps 20% of top sportsmen are left-handed. The stats make the point that left-handers have the advantage in asymmetric sports like baseball, where the right-handed batter has to run anti-clockwise towards first base after swinging and facing to his left.

It is the comparative rarity of the left-hander that gives the illusion of grace. David Gower most graceful of batsmen used that very word, "illusion", to describe the left-hander's apparent grace.

"The fact is," he once told an interviewer, "both (the right-handers and the left-handers) have been horribly misnamed because the left-hander is really a right-hander and the right-hander is really a left-hander, if you work out which hand is doing most of the work. So from my point of view, my right arm is my strongest and therefore it's the right hand, right eye and generally the right side which is doing all the work. So if there is anything about this, then the left-handers, as such, should be called right-handers."

"It's the top hand which is doing all the work. It appears there's an illusion about this aspect too... they talk about left-handers having grace. Not all of them do. Though Allan Border was a wonderful player, he was short on grace."

What a mindful thought to actually make the cricket lovers realize that lefties are indeed righties and vice versa. When it comes to cricket this is more than true.

Graeme Pollock from South Africa, many years ago, explained that he played tennis right-handed, but golf left-handed (he signed an autograph with his right hand). Garry Sobers, on the other hand, was left-handed in everything he did. I don't know what conclusions can be drawn from this. Perhaps the left-hander whose right hand is the stronger hand plays the top-hand shots like the drive better than most. And the one with the stronger left as bottom hand plays the shots square of the wicket, the cut and pull, better. And since there is no more beautiful stroke in the game than the cover-drive, left-handers who play this well look most attractive.

Four of the five highest individual scores in Tests have been made by left-handers, two by Brian Lara who was thrilling to watch, though not quite pleasing in the Gower sense. But even if we include him among graceful left-handers since Woolley, the list is still rather limited: Pollock, Sobers, Gower, Lara, perhaps Alvin Kallicharran, who, if he had played tennis, would have been known as a touch player. India's Salim Durani batted with an apparent lack of effort - an important ingredient of elegance - and Sourav Ganguly has been described as having a lazy elegance, but again, these players were not in the Gower class.

But look at the left-handers, some of them great players, who were and are innocent of elegance - Border, Matthew Hayden, Clive Lloyd, Arjuna Ranatunga, Kumar Sangakkara, Chris Gayle, Sanath Jayasuriya, Justin Langer, Graeme Smith, Mark Taylor, Gary Kirsten, Bill Lawry, Marcus Trescothick, Aamer Sohail, Lance Klusener.

Left-handers play shots that right-handers do not play quite as easily, because more left-handers play right-arm medium-pacers bowling across their bodies from round the wicket than right-handers play left-arm bowlers. The not-quite-glance, not-really-a-hook that left-handers play fine off their hips is unique to them. Both Gower and Lara played it exceptionally well.

Ganguly didn't - but then he was a converted left-hander, someone who began that way so he could use his left-handed older brother's equipment. Sadiq Mohammad was a converted left-hander, whose older brother Hanif understood that as a left-hander Sadiq had a better chance of getting picked.

Too much has been made of the left-hander, and his alleged grace. A Gower was graceful because he was graceful, not because he was a left-hander. A Javed Miandad lacked grace not because he was a right-hander but because that was how he batted. One doesn't automatically presuppose the other.