A touch out of place
It’s easy to understand Shane Warne needing a mate in the dressing room – Darren Lehmann in the first edition, Justin Langer in the second, and now Damien Martyn – but what Martyn stands to gain by hauling his retired bones to India
Sambit Bal
25-Feb-2013
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Still, it was painful to watch him on Thursday night. Mark Waugh aside, he was the Australian batsman of that generation who gave us true viewing pleasure, caressing the ball rather than carving it. In that he was an exception to the Australian brand of batsmanship, which is based on ruthless and mechanical efficiency.
He played a couple of seasons in the ICL as well and didn’t particularly distinguish himself. But the ICL lacked the profile of its more powerful cousin and Martyn’s struggles went largely unnoticed. At the IPL, though, it is impossible to avoid the glare and, as Martyn searched for an unfamiliar game, it didn’t look pretty. As Sachin Tendulkar and Jacques Kallis – and even Rahul Dravid – have shown, classically orthodox players can hold their own in the form but it is unbecoming of touch artists.
For a while Martyn tried to play the pivot, but with his less-skilled team-mates struggling on a sprightly pitch in Bangalore, there was no one to bat around him. He miscued trying to hit over the top, failed to put away a full-toss, made room to cut but barely managed a tickle. After 15 singles, he finally managed to hit a four off the 23rd ball he faced – an un-Martyn like swing over mid-on - before being put out of his indignity by a yorker the next ball. It was a relief.
It’s the same with VVS Laxman. He scored 22 off 14 balls in his first IPL match this year. It was perhaps his fastest innings in the tournament but it was certainly the ugliest he has ever played. There was a swipe past mid-on, a mis-timed loft towards midwicket, and then he cleared his front leg and launched the ball over long on. Now why did cricket have to come to this?
Sambit Bal is the editor of ESPNcricinfo