The late great Kobe Bryant once famously said: “These guys are playing checkers, while I’m playing chess."
The quote, although not entirely original, typifies Bryant’s arrogance while poignantly describing the disparity between a super athlete and an average athlete. Mamba Mentality, they call it.
AB de Villiers has it. He doesn’t speak about it, doesn’t need to. The fraternity does it for him.
De Villiers, it seems, doesn’t operate from a place of insecurity. He has never grappled to find his name in the oft-had conversation of the ‘greatest batsmen ever’. He would rather be a great Robin than assume the role of Batman. But on nights when Batman, and there are a number of those around, can’t get off the couch, Robin paints masterpieces so magnificent you wonder if Batman matters at all.
One such night came on a sticky wicket in Sharjah last week. You may remember it as 73 from 33 balls, including five fours and six sixes, against Kolkata Knight Riders on a pitch which yielded 233 runs from all the other batsmen combined.
A gifted stillness of the head, footwork from the Gods, athleticism par none and hand-eye-coordination worth its visuals in gold.
The result was sublime, but no one understood the value of the knock until Kolkata were done batting (112/9). Besides the fact that even Virat Kohli, arguably the greatest of this era, looked first-division with his 33 from 28 balls, the highest score from the opposition was 34 from Shubman Gill.
In the wake, de Villiers feigned ignorance. He was possibly the only person surprised by what he had done, for the world is not new to his superhuman feats.
Marriage of skill and reflex
“What AB does is out of this world,” gushes Ramji Srinivasan, high-performance coach and bio-mechanic expert. “There is no one else on earth who can do what he does. It’s the perfect marriage of skill and reflex. That’s the advantage of playing multiple sports. When you build your kinaesthetic early on in life, it translates across all sport. Being a super athlete is not about fitness alone, it’s also about reflexes and an understanding of projectile. Which is why most people who play multiple sports seem great at everything. It’s not just physiology. It’s a mind-body balance.”
De Villiers, by admission, has not played hockey, football, rugby and several other sports at a competitive level, but he was culturally conditioned to try them all. He got a little something out of everything, evidently, because few in cricket react better to a cricket ball than de Villiers does.
Though older at 36, he hasn’t relied on pre-meditation, yet. To him, it’s about the waiting game, the patience to see what the ball is doing and quick enough reflexes to respond.
This is where most get it wrong. They reach, Kohli too occasionally. They find it hard to trust the pace and bounce off the pitch even if their reading out of the bowler’s hand is spot on, a flaw especially stark on spongy pitches against slower deliveries. De Villiers doesn’t mind. Deep in his crease with a slight crouch at the point of release and a marginally open stance, de Villiers shuffles back and across before stalling his backlift a milli-second more than most would prescribe. Head still, he has conquered every sinew of his musculature telling him to go after the sphere. He waits.
Perfect timing
As a viewer, you don’t expect him to make contact, let alone cleanly, because of how long he has held back, but when that bat comes whizzing down, it’s on time. Almost always. Perfect timing, coupled with an adroit golf swing - a swivel of the hips which would put some professional golfers to shame. Then there’s a mini-swirl - peculiar to him - after the ball has pinged off the bat.
This routine stayed the same irrespective of what the bowler did throughout his stay against Kolkata.
“Most of what AB is able to do is because of his reflexes. It’s unbelievable. He is one of the only cricketers I know off, Sachin (Tendulkar) and (MS) Dhoni have this ability too, to react as opposed to act. They rarely jump the gun,” explains Ramji. “They make it look like they had the time because their reflexes are so advanced that they can allow the ball to come closer to them. This is what they mean by playing it under their eyes. Few batsmen have this ability. It’s also about having a still head. In fact, it all comes down to how still your head is. His (AB's) barely shifts focus once it’s locked in. It’s unreal,”
This part-natural, part-trained ability - while important in executing conventional shots - is also what puts the South African in a position to defy convention - scoops, paddles, upper-cuts. As ironic as it sounds, it’s staying inside a metaphorical box (de Villiers, circa 2015) that allows him to go beyond.
Checkmate.