There’s something about India’s batting line-up that has us perplexed. Their specialist Test batsmen this tour are Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, Shubman Gill, Chesteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane and Hanuman Vihari. Rohit Sharma is ready to come in for the third Test. Notice anything? Yes, theyare all right-handed.
Check out the list of India’s most prolific Test runscorers. It starts with Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sunil Gavaskar and VVS Laxman. Then it is Virender Sehwag and Kohli. Everyone of them is right-handed.
It takes seven rungs before you get to Sourav Ganguly — India’s greatest left-hander — while Gautam Gambhir is the only other leftie in the top 20. You have to go all the way down to Shikhar Dhawan at No 29 to find the next one.
By comparison, Australia has five lefties in our top 10 Test runscorers — Allan Border, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Mark Taylor and David Warner. So what’s going on in India?
Remember the stories you’d hear from your parents (maybe it was your own experience) about the nuns giving them a whack with a ruler if they picked up a pen in their left hand? The devil’s work, and all that. In India it was worse — and it’s still a thing.
“We know of a case from Rajasthan where a child was repeatedly punished in school for using his left hand. But he just couldn’t write with his right and finally was asked to leave.”
said Sandeip Vishnoi, founder of the Indian Left Hander Club, in a 2014 story published in The Economic Times.
Surprisingly, left-handedness varies in different parts of the world. In Canada and the UK, the proportion of left-handers is about 11.5 per cent. In Australia it is 10 per cent. But as you move across Asia it becomes 7.5 per cent in the Emirates, 5.8 per cent in India and 4 per cent in Japan. Scientists have since discovered environmental rather than genetic factors play more of a role in determining which hand is more dominant, which seems to makes sense in India.
Indian schools have introduced programs to assist left-handers but the progress is slow. It has taken its time to pass through the ranks of India’s cricketers, where Ganguly and former one-day star Yuvraj Singh provided inspiration to those Indian kids who couldn’t help but stand on that side of the bat, no matter how much they wanted to be like Sachin. Current Test wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant and allrounder Ravindra Jadeja are the latest to carry that role.
The Indian Premier League, which has been quick to eschew the stuffy traditions of cricket, is the next weapon for spreading left-handedness throughout the land.
Kohli may be the IPL’s leading runscorer but second on the list is leftie Suresh Raina. Third is Warner, a huge presence in the IPL — and this week the self-declared ICC TikToker of the Decade — while Dhawan is fifth.
That’s three out of the top five. And, as one IPL expert told us this week, “look out for Ishan Kishan” — the man who topped this year’s IPL six-hitters’ list with 30.
Three stripes and you’re out
A curious little reminder about how sedate Australian cricket fans are compared to their international counterparts came on Monday night when Adam Gilchrist and Andrew Symonds shared the Fox Sports commentary duties for the Monday night Big Bash game when the discussion turned to bouncers and helmets.
“Remember the night Brett Lee looked like he’d taken Adam Parore’s head off,” recalled Gilly.
“Yeah, the locals didn’t like it too much,” replied Symonds.
Straight to the YouTubes we went to find a vicious bouncer during a one-dayer played in 2000 between Australia and New Zealand that knocked the notoriously lippy Parore’s helmet off his head and onto the stumps. He was given out hit wicket despite the protests of the batsman who argued the delivery should’ve been called a no-ball for being above shoulder height.
Lee gave the Black Caps’ antagoniser-in-chief a huge send-off as the Aussies cruised to a 50-run win in front of a rowdy Dunedin crowd filled with the notorious uni student fans dubbed ‘scarfies’.
Gilchrist recalls the night in his book ‘True Colours’.
“The scarfies didn’t like it, and started setting objects on fire and throwing them onto the field. They were feral,” he wrote.
“At around midnight we rode back to the hotel in vans. One group of guys, Matty Hayden among them, wanted to stop at McDonald’s. Inside, a couple of words were exchanged with some locals angry about the way the game had gone. Our guys came back to the vans and we returned to the hotel.
“In the morning, the tyres on the van had been slashed, and a little blade was stuck into one of the tyres with a note saying: ‘Hayden, your family will suffer.’
“They say the only criminals who get caught are the stupid ones. Well, this was a case in point. The note was signed: ‘Adidas, three stripes.’ One of the guys in McDonald’s had been wearing an Adidas tracksuit top, and wanted Haydos to know he’d written the note. Problem was, the police quickly identified and arrested him – apparently still wearing his top.”
BC’s tip of the week
Night Of Delight ran fourth at Caulfield on Boxing Day and made huge ground. Likely to be ridden closer to the lead in race 1 at the same track on Saturday. Jamie Kah(ching) replaces jockey Damien Thornton in a significant rider change for the runner wearing the No 10 saddlecloth.
mcloughlins@theaustralian.com.au
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