Of method and flair

The debate between method and flair, and it provides some wonderfully compelling arguments on either side, took place in different parts of the world in the last month; in Melbourne, in Singapore and again and again in England.

The flair players bring the crowds in, make us hold our breath that one second longer and get the odour of mothballs off our favourite adjectives. Journalists love them, commentators adore them and they acquire folk status for performances that might get lost if they came from method players. It has happened throughout the history of the game. Lala Amarnath and Vijay Hazare; Rohan Kanhai and Conrad Hunte; Ted Dexter and Ken Barrington. In more recent times Sandeep Patil and Yashpal Sharma and a little later Krishnamachari Srikkanth and Anshuman Gaekwad.

I particularly remember two instances of outstanding pairs of cricketers. Sunil Gavaskar maintains today that Gundappa Vishwanath was a more talented cricketer and maybe that is why Vishwanath’s sixties and seventies made as much news as Gavaskar’s centuries. And when Vishwanath did get a century, it was talked about for a very long time. He was the ultimate flair player, Gavaskar the master of the art of method batting.

But long after the applause has died down and the adjectives are back in the closet, it is the method players who keep going. And so Gavaskar played for four years after Vishwanath had finished, made 4000 more Test runs and there were 20 centuries more as well.

You can almost see this scenario being replayed with the Waugh twins. Mark has always been the stylist, the cricketer all of us gushed over and who, in the years immediately following Border, Boon and Jones, was regarded as the finest Australian batsman. All along, brother Steve, hung around in the shadow, chipping away, playing the unfashionable shots. And, it is not always remembered, scoring more runs as well. The flair player, who looks like he is coming to the end, averages just under 42, the method player, who seems good for another couple of years, averages over 50.

You will see that with teams as well. At Singapore, South Africa, the ultimate practitioners of method cricket beat Pakistan, the very definition of flair cricket quite easily. After the game, Waqar Younis thought it was the fielding and the discipline that cost them the match and that, in a nutshell, has been the problem over the years for the `flair teams’. They blow hot and cold and so, on the day, they might beat anyone but over a period of time, they really stand very little chance.

It was this adherence to their method that allowed South Africa to match, and indeed to overcome, Australia in the three one-dayers at the Colonial Stadium. I would wager that no other team in international cricket would have managed to play to the standard they did in spite of being without so many key players. South Africa, only really, have two flair players in Allan Donald and Jonty Rhodes and even they have managed a very high level of base efficiency.

It is my theory that flair players, because of the great talent they possess, tend to be indispensable players. Great teams, on the other hand, are made up of players who can easily slide in and out without affecting the overall standard of the side. Under Bob Simpson, Australia were a wonderful method side, now with Gilchrist, Mark Waugh, Ponting, Martyn, Symonds and Shane Lee, their batting is flair dominated. On most days, their talent will see them through but try taking a look at how often they have had to fall back on their two method giants, Steve Waugh and Michael Bevan.

In fact, this adherence to flair over discipline is what is costing the West Indies so dear. In their prime, they were a fantastic team to watch but they did not just turn up and beat the hell out of the opposition. The method of Greenidge, Haynes and Gomes meshed very well with the instinctive style of Richards, Lloyd, Dujon and Logie. And on the parameters of fitness and fielding, the two pillars of the method teams, they were unmatched. It is not always acknowledged that the great West Indies teams of the late seventies and early eighties were very hardworking sides as well; it is amazing how often one fast bowler always stuck around to get valuable runs.

Today, that legacy of discipline is represented by Courtney Walsh and Curtley Ambrose. Long into the autumn of their careers, they have become perfect method bowlers and in doing so, have achieved a consistency they did not even in their prime. But the batting, so pitiably short of talent, isn’t getting the point and neither, particularly, is the bowling. The perfect examples of that are Franklyn Rose and Nixon McLean both of whom had the ability to become genuine world class fast bowlers.

Talent can sometimes do that to people; it can lull sportsmen into thinking they have the solution to every problem and that is why the greatest sportsmen are those who use their skill to provide the gloss to a solid base of discipline. That is why a Sachin Tendulkar, while falling just a bit short of the marvellous landscape that Brian Lara has painted, will never go through the kind of extended bad patch that Lara is in; or at any rate will never provide the same degree of inconsistency.

And that is why Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan are the greatest sportsmen of our times. Given the incomparable skill they possess, they would have been champions anyway. But to the great art in their hands, they bring in the foolproof method of science and that is what makes them legends. "No matter what people tell you," Jordan told a young Woods, "you must keep working on your game."

On a smaller scale, in South Africa’s wonderful performances over the last two months, and on a larger scale in the words of Jordan to Woods, there is a huge lesson for a lot of us.

Harsha Bhogle

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