Genius is difficult to describe. AB de Villiers scored an undefeated 73-of-33-ball Monday night against the Kolkata Knight Riders, on a field where everyone else was 218 of 207, and while that’s obviously extraordinary, it wasn’t. Look extraordinary.
Or let’s put it this way. Did not see differently extraordinary.
It was like any other extraordinary T20 inning that Villiers has played. He didn’t stand differently in the crease, nor did he grip his bat differently, nor did he make any hits you haven’t seen before. No new tactics were devised in the momentum to combat a slow, grippy pitch in which every other hitter struggled for fluidity. It was just AB de Villiers hitting like AB de Villiers.
It was the kind of entry that makes you look for supernatural explanations. Virat Kohli faced 28 balls in the same inning and hit only one boundary, outside his outer edge. He looked at all of De Villiers’ entrances from the other end, and at the introduction ceremony called him “superhuman.” He spoke of the “spark” in De Villiers’ eyes. De Villiers himself said he felt an “energy” when he got on the bus to the stadium and felt “a little light out of my eye.”
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Certainly, there were times during De Villiers’ entries when a ghostly light seemed to shine in his eyes. Something that was not quite of this world seemed to happen, for example, when he threw the third ball of his innings directly onto the field. The ball hit the stumps at the other end, deflected about 45 degrees, hit the mid-off drop to his left and kept running away from that fielder even as he jumped and chased him, seeming to accelerate as he approached the limit when he did. the laws of physics would have been briefly suspended.
However, as remarkable as the inning was, we know it was bat and ball and flesh and blood, and it was all explainable in some way. Kohli got to the gist of it.
“I just have to say that a lot of people can do what you’ve seen in the other games, but on a field like that, to hit like that, I think only AB can do that, just because of the way he prepares and is so still. when you see the ball clearly and it’s so dangerous, because you can wait for the slower balls and deposit them outside the stadium, so it was a special hit, “Kohli said.
Still.
That word gets to the heart of what makes De Villiers so good. This was such a slow tone that De Villiers never once immersed himself in his considerable repertoire behind the wicket and consequently did not move around the fold as extravagantly as he often does. But even when moving around, he’s perfectly still the moment the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand.
The fastest feet in the business and the calmest head.
Sometimes the moments that best illustrate what moves someone like De Villiers are those rare moments when something goes wrong, when the finely tuned inner machinery of their game loses a beat.
Take the second ball of lap 16, a slower detour from Kamlesh Nagarkoti, clocking in at 112.1 km / h. It was the kind of delivery that had frequently knocked hitters out of shape throughout the Royal Challengers Bangalore innings, up until that point, and also knocked De Villiers out of shape – hitting 10 of 10 – out of shape. He launched too early, missed, and ended up getting hit on the thigh pad.
It was an illustration of everything that generally never happens when de Villiers hits: a loose, imprecise swing with the bat extending too far in front of his body, causing a loss of balance that tilts his head to the side in a kind of angled moment. de-Villiers.
When everything works well, the De Villiers bat-swing is like a golf swing. He mentions it in this video, where he explains what he calls his “box theory.”
“I always talk about a little box that surrounds me,” he says. “I don’t want any part of my bat, feet, head, anything, to come out of this box. Everything must happen in this box, because that’s where I have all my power, right here, in this box, everything to play. Right here .
“In golf, they talk about a compact golf swing. You have to feel like you’re almost swinging in a box, and it’s the same with my hitting.”
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De Villiers had come out of that box against that slower ball from Nagarkoti. But that’s what good slower balls can force hitters to do on slow pitches, without offering them rhythm and asking them to manufacture all the power themselves.
Where other hitters might look for other ways to make up for that lack of rhythm, hitting out of his crease, perhaps, to find the ball sooner, de Villiers simply went back to his box, stretching, for a fraction of a second, what a moment of stillness that defines it.
It sounds simple when you read it, but it surely is not. You are working against your muscle memory, which has been honed in tens of thousands of balls in mostly faster pitches, and while each tackle involves recalibrating muscle memory, it is what “sticking your eyes in” essentially means, it takes a skill level to make it into the 11-ball space on a course like this in Sharjah.
Look at the next two balls that follow the ball that hits De Villiers. They are also slower offcutters, delivered at similar speeds (116.6 km / h and 114.8 km / h), but De Villiers holds his form for longer against them. It is often said that the best hitters have more time to play their shots; Faced with these two installments, De Villiers is prepared and waiting for what seems like an eternity.
His back foot has crossed to the stump on his trigger movement, and his wrists are lopsided, holding his bat just above the flap of his right pad. His head, having lowered slightly when released, is still, his eyes perfectly level. Everything, in that moment that stretches and stretches, is still, while waiting for the ball to enter its box.
In his box, outside the park. The first one is a bit short, and it opens up and hits him on the midwicket. Go over the stadium roof and into fast-paced traffic. The next one is full, leaning toward the leg stump, and he clears his front leg and unleashes that golf swing, his bat landing on his left shoulder as the ball smashes through another ceiling, past long this time. One more dent in one more car.
It seems absurdly simple. You tell yourself, hey, those slower balls are getting predictable now. Maybe the lengths are wrong. But De Villiers keeps doing it, over and over, while at the other end, and at other times in this game, other hitters, good hitters, fight. Then take a closer look. Maybe there is a light shining in your eye.
.
