Crowd’s roar acknowledges genius that is AB de Villiers

Great cricketers are admired and loved everywhere. But there are a few who transcend the parochial and patriotic affiliations of fans from countries other than their own. Their appeal and appeal flattens the world of fan prejudice as it were

Among my earliest and most enduring memories of watching cricket comes from the 1966-67 Test against the West Indies at Brabourne Stadium when Garfield Sobers walked out to bat.

For a moment the packed stadium went into dead-drop silence, as if transfixed by the sight of the man with the loping strides and a hint of a swagger walk out into the middle, before erupting into a rousing reception that still rings in my ears.

As a 10-year-old, I wondered what the ado was about, as also whether my fellow home fans shouldn’t be eager to see Sobers’s back. After all, he was the arch-enemy, the biggest threat to the Indian team.

It didn’t take long for the great West Indian to change my mind. Over the course of the match he did just about everything — bat, bowl and field — with style and aplomb. He was brilliance personified and I was an overnight convert.

The genius of Sobers grew exponentially in my cricketing sensibilities thereafter. The more one saw of Sobers, you craved only for more, leading to the paradox that is peculiar to sport: I want my team to win, but I also want you to succeed.

Sir Don Bradman, Imran Khan, Viv Richards, Sachin Tendulkar, Dennis Lillee, Shane Warne are some other names that come readily to mind in evoking similar sentiment all over the cricket world. There are obviously others too in the long history of the game, but not too many I would venture.

AB de Villiers belongs to this club today. The roar that went up when he walked out to bat on Saturday could have carried from Bengaluru, where the second Test is being played, to Pretoria where he was born. But more than just the decibel levels, this was a salutation by the crowd in acknowledgement of his genius.

True, this was de Villiers’s 100th Test and his bond with this city runs deep since he represents the Royal Challengers in the IPL. But this was something beyond the usual fan accolade: veneration, awe, respect, and a deep desire to see him succeed were all rolled into one.

The charisma of such players is not to be confused with just popularity. Ken Barrington and Tony Greig, for instance, enjoyed huge fan followings in India. But this was largely built around their endearing on-field personas.

There is a discernible buzz that de Villiers generates when he steps on to the cricket field nowadays. It can be experienced in Dharamshala, Mohali, Johannesburg, Headingley, Sydney — wherever he plays in the world. The appetite is whetted, the pulse beats faster, and the attention is focused on him almost the exclusion of the others.

This is not puerile hero-worship. The club to which de Villiers now belongs draws it appeal from a substantive body of work accomplished for he has reached such heady realms of excellence in all formats — and with such consistency — that the mind can only boggle.

The perceptive former England player Ed Smith perhaps captures this best in his superb essay on de Villiers, The Man With No Minus (http://tiny-url.com/phfdjfh). Writes Smith, “ . His complete excellence has expanded our understanding of what can be done with a cricket bat. For all his relaxed courteousness, de Villiers is iconoclastic in his brilliance: he has pushed back at the old assumptions that used to shackle batsmanship.

“He is an accidental innovator. By uniting gifts and strengths that usually exist separately, de Villiers provides a thrilling glimpse of the future. If the game can follow his lead, we will have quite some sport on our hands.”

Much of this was evident on Saturday as de Villiers countered the Indian spinners on a tailor-made pitch where the rest of his team floundered. He couldn’t score a century but his 85 was a tour de force nonetheless for its skill and derring do, leaving little scope for doubt why he is rated the best batsman in the world.