Hyderabad: Why do people enjoy a sport where 22 players bake all day under the scorching sun? Is it only to watch players throw a ball, another tries to hit? To win, all you have to do is score more runs than the oppositions.
But that is not everything for fans. Cricket without a little bit of drama doesn't attract attention of many fans. Cricket is a serious matter for cricketers, but for fans, it is a mean of pure entertainment. So talking about fans' perspective Australian comedian Paul Hogan once said "cricket needs brightening up a bit. My solution is to let the players drink at the beginning of the game, not after."
There are a lot of things outside the duel between bat and ball that make millions of fans glued to their TV sets. One such thing is cricketers' superstitions.
So let's look at five cricketers and their uncanny superstitions.
Sachin Tendulkar
Despite being international cricket's highest run-scorer in Test and ODI cricket, even the legendary Sachin Tendulkar also relied upon superstition. He used to believe that putting on his left pad before the right one will help him to score big.
He also believed to have repaired his bat before the 2011 World Cup intending to win the World Cup, a much-desired title which he won in his last appearance at the multilateral event.
Sanath Jayasuriya
1996 World Cup winning hero of Sri Lanka Sanath Jayasuriya was a destructive batsman. He had the ability to draw thousands of fans to the cricket stadium with his hard-hitting batting style.
But the southpaw thought that talent is alone not enough to be successful in the game. So he had developed a strange but monotonous superstition of touching each and every part of his batting equipment.
It was an obsession for him to touch every part of his willow before he could get ready to face a ball.
Kavil Dev
India could have never won the 1983 World Cup if they had lost the quarterfinal match against Zimbabwe. India batting first were reduced to 17 for 5. In this situation young all-rounder Kapil Dev walked in to bat and emerged as the saviour of the Indian team. He batted with sheer confidence and played a quality Zimbabwe bowling attack across the ground.
But Kapil Dev didn't rely on any superstition to save India from imminent defeat. But finding the captain playing the right chord team manager Man Singh asked the players not to move from their seats. They were not even allowed to go for a loo break. Kapil ended up the innings with an unbeaten 175 and India eventually won the match by 31 runs.
Steve Smith
In contemporary cricket, Australia's Steve Smith is one of the most attractive batsmen. With 60 plus batting average, he stands tall in Test cricket among his contemporaries. But the 30-year-old believes eating the duck means getting out for a duck.
But his superstition was proved wrong not once, but twice in his career. In 2015 Lord's Ashes Test, he went on to score 215 not out despite having a duck.
Just a month after 2019 Ashes heroics, Smith was dismissed for an extraordinary duck. Batting for New South Wales in the ongoing Sheffield Sheild tournament, Smith was dismissed off the very fifth ball against Queensland at The Gabba in Brisbane. It was Smith's first duck in first-class cricket in 55 innings and almost three years. He was last dismissed for a duck in November 2016.
Neil McKenzie
Popular but superstitious South African cricketer Neil McKenzie's pre-match rituals involved taping his bat to the ceiling and insisting that all toilet seats in the dressing room are down before going out to bat.
At the same time, his wish was all the lights of the dressing room should be switched off. In the context of a game like cricket, where the use of technique and technologies are regular affair, such behaviour doesn't seem so extraordinary.
If you are an avid cricket fan, these superstitions wouldn't seem extraordinary to you at all.
