The sublime left-hand batsmen

From S. Giridhar and V. J. Raghunath, India
The elder amongst us has watched left handers from the days of the incomparable Neil Harvey and was a first division left hand batsman in Chennai and Mumbai. The other can recall the magic of Sobers whom he saw more than 43 years ago and has bowled leg breaks without much success to left handers of even minor league quality. We argued, debated and traded anecdotes to compile a list of what we believe are the most sublime of left handers. The dictionary defines sublime as something that is characterized by feelings of grandeur, nobility, awe, magnificence and something that is ennobling. Going by this definition, we let our memories guide us in our quest of pulling out 12 gems. Here they are in order of their appearance in test cricket:

Frank Woolley of England, Neil Harvey of Australia, Garfield Sobers of West Indies, Graeme Pollock of South Africa, Alvin Kallicharan of West Indies, David Gower of England, Brian Lara of West Indies, Sanath Jayasuriya of Sri Lanka, Saurav Ganguly of India, Adam Gilchrist of Australia, Kumara Sangakara of Sri Lanka and Gautam Gambhir of India.

The argument as usual may be over a couple of names. Should Mike Hussey and Stephen Fleming not come in? Was Fredericks not a uniquely thrilling batsman? Should Gambhir be included merely because he has been so effulgent over the past few months? Surely Saeed Anwar of Pakistan has given viewers more than enough pleasure to be counted. And just because Hayden smote the ball powerfully does it make him less sublime? Readers may express their opinion of who they think ought to be in this pantheon of twelve.

Ranking these batsmen is something we do not want to do – it would be meaningless and insulting to their genius. Mount Everest has enough space for all of them.

What makes the left hander so special? For one the rarity because we still get to see only two or at best three in a team. Among batsmen who have scored over 2000 runs in Test cricket there is only one left hander for every three right hand batsmen. And then there are these advantages:

- Bowlers find it difficult to switch their line and the left hander is given opportunities on the leg stump and outside to score from. - The normal incoming ball from outside a right hander’s off stump cannot get the leftie LBW since it pitches outside leg-stump of the left hander. - Wicket keepers find the left side difficult and are prone to be clumsy keeping to left handers. - Since the field has to change and the bowler has to switch line every time a single is taken - when batting with a right hander – the leftie irritates and disturbs their rhythm by his very presence. If there are enough left handers in the team, it makes sense to keep the batting order flexible to ensure a left-right combination at the crease as far as possible. - Bowlers find it difficult to bowl from round the wicket even though it is an important option against the leftie. Spinners tend to bowl from wide of the crease while faster bowlers are always conscious of not running on to the pitch on their follow through.

Just as the right hander’s on drive is the touchstone of his prowess, so is the cover drive for the left hander. Does it have anything to do with the batsman’s stance? Neil Harvey was a hero to many when he burst on the scene and such was his footwork, grace and artistry that even 50 years later there are many who swear that he cannot be surpassed.

Of Sobers and his unlimited magic so much has been told that we just share one incident – when Benaud in the 1960-61 Test in Australia thought he had beaten Sobers with the googly, that magician changed stroke even as the ball was sneaking past him and whipped it back to the sight screen. Till date no one has remotely matched the insouciant grace and lissomness that Sobers brought to the ground.

Following Harvey and Sobers, was Graeme Pollock who perhaps could have ended up as the best of them all. Could he have sustained his initial tempo? Would he have been equally good when confronted by the best spinners from India and Pakistan? The jury will forever be out on that. Meanwhile West Indies unleashed a line of great left handers. From the 1960s till 2000 they produced a string of pearls – Lloyd, Kallicharan, Fredericks, Lara and Gayle. Lara did enough in a magnificent career to keep the debate going permanently as to who is the best batsman after Bradman. Has there been anyone with as much magic in the high backlift as Lara? Has there been a batsman who played as late as Lara – so much so that to mere mortals he looked supernatural as he seemed to have a choice of three shots for every ball. No one has ever faced Murali better than Lara and remember that for much of his career he carried a limp West Indian batting line up on his colossus like shoulders.

Grace – the most often used expression to describe left handers sits most aptly on Gower. None better than this worthy could conjure up the most sumptuous fare with the lightest of brush strokes - he would wave the ball away from him between point and cover and if you put a fielder to plug that gap then between them as well.

Aha, we are getting into hot water here – we are talking of batsmen splitting the offside and we have not said a word about Ganguly? But everything about his ethereal timing through the offside has been said by Dravid in his famous offside and God quote. However no less awesome was the shimmy to the left arm spinner to hoist him over long on and long off. Ganguly like many modern cricketers used a heavy bat but we guess he would have played those gorgeous square drives even with grand pa’s walking stick.

The first great left hander to grace cricket was Frank Woolley of Kent and England. Clem Hill was an effective but ungainly left hander in those early days. There were few left handed batsmen those days. All the great batsmen - Trumper, Hobbs, Sutcliffe, McCartney, Jackson, Foster, Mclaren, Fry and Ranji were right-handers. Till 1950 and the advent of Harvey, while one could reel of names of prolific right handers the left handers’ club could hardly conjure the odd name or two. England had only Chapman, Paynter and Leyland against big names like Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Hammond, Hutton and others. Down under against names like Bradman, Ponsford, McCartney and McCabe we have to dig deep to come up with merely Warren Bardsley - a dour slow accumulator.

India was even more bereft of left handers. Imagine, till the fifties - C K Nayudu, Lala Amarnath, Merchant, Mushtaq, Pataudi, Hazare, Umrigar, Manjrekar, Roy and not a single left hander amongst them. The first left hander who broke through was Deepak Shodhan who scored a hundred on debut against Pakistan in 1952 and immediately sank without trace thereafter. Nari Contractor, a determined and not inelegant left hander could have played longer for India but his Test career was cruelly finished by a near fatal bouncer from Griffith in West Indies. The most graceful of the Indians was undoubtedly Salim Durrani - a genius who could be wonderful when in the mood, had so much time to play the ball and such silken grace in everything he did. Many years after the languid but enigmatic Wadekar and the wasted talent of Surinder Amarnath, there was Vinod Kambli who made two double hundreds and a chockfull of runs in a couple of home series before fading away. The jinx on left hand batsmen in India was only broken by Ganguly, the most enduring and graceful of them all.

Was batting the other way round discouraged for some reason in those days? It certainly seems to have been discouraged in India. After all, the right hand is the one used for eating, writing, greeting and benediction while the lowly left hand was for well ... other less dignified tasks. In fact India contributes just three names to the list of 68 left handed batsmen who have scored over 2000 Test runs – Ganguly, Gambhir and Wadekar.

But the changes sweeping society can be felt - parents these days do not discourage children using their left hand for various tasks from writing to batting if they are naturally left handed. And India in fact has Yuvraj, Raina, Gambhir, and Irfan Pathan all in the ODI team.

One Day Cricket has its own strong contribution. No example could be more powerful than that of Sanath Jayasuriya. For five years after making his Test debut Jayasuriya was just an innocuous journeyman - till he was asked to open in ODI in 1195-96 by his captain Ranatunga. And the genius that had been bottled up announced itself to the world and then strode it like a colossus. Gambhir is another example. Adam Gilchrist made the No. 7 batting position the most feared one in Test cricket because he turned matches on their heads from this position. India’s Yuvraj Singh gets his chances in Tests because he is such a brilliant one day cricketer. Test cricket is seeing changes – run rates are increasing, fewer Tests are ending up as draws and there is place for the aggressive genius and therefore for the maverick leftie too.

By worshipping these dozen artists we are not in anyway being disrespectful to the others. If we wanted a left hander to bat us safely through two days of tsunami we would always want Allan Border and Shiv Chanderpaul in our middle order; or Andy Flower who for Zimbabwe was like Horatio on the bridge; if we wanted to take a tilt at the most daunting of targets we would want the pugnacious Smith to open the batting for us; to put fear into the opposition we want the oak like Hayden up front and the towering presence of Lloyd in the middle of our line up. All these stalwarts have averages that are superior to some of the players in our sublime list. But because they give the ball a mighty thump with the bat as opposed to the satin like touch of the sublime artists they perhaps qualify for a separate article that could be titled the “Mighty Left Handers”!