“The fox,” wrote the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, “knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” This has been interpreted in many ways. The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin used it as the central theme of his essay on Tolstoy.
Some psychologists have said that foxes have different strategies for different problems and understand nuance while hedgehogs reduce all problems to one overarching principle.
So what does all this have to do with cricket? It can be the starting point of one of sport’s enduring discussions: the so-called natural player versus the non-natural (for want of a better word). It is easy to assume that naturals are consistent strikers of the ball while non-naturals are defensive and more concerned with where their left elbow finishes rather than where the ball does.
Yet, a Geoff Boycott is as much a natural as a Garry Sobers; what is natural to him is simply different from what is natural to Sobers. Likewise with Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar. The latter could do things with the bat others could not even contemplate doing; so could the former. Not understanding this has caused young Rishabh Pant to declare “there is nothing called a natural game” following his first half-century in one-day internationals at Chepauk.
The two categories, it must be admitted, are not absolute and there are bound to be overlaps, even in the career of a single individual. But they are convenient, and as likely to explain a writer or artist as a cricketer.
Both categories contain top players. Sobers, Tendulkar, Viv Richards, Dravid, Sunil Gavaskar were foxes while Virender Sehwag, Boycott, Sanath Jayasuriya were hedgehogs.
False debate
The natural versus non-natural is a false debate. This might have something to do with the limitation of the language which has no specific words for the degrees between the absolutely untalented at one end of the spectrum and the genius at the other. The genius probably falls into both categories; he is both fox for his range and hedgehog for his mastery.
I was once watching the video of an old Test match in England with the West Indies bowler Lance Gibbs. Sobers was fielding at silly point to the off spinner. The batsman, a left hander, played forward and Sobers moved to his left. But the ball took the edge and went the other way, and Sobers, as if he had meant to do this all along, changed direction and swung back with a dancer’s grace to make the catch.
“Genius!” said Gibbs who got up from his chair in admiration. Gibbs must have been 80 then, and was still excited by a catch taken some four decades earlier.
“The man could do anything,” said Dennis Lillee of Sobers. “Even dance like Fred Astaire.”
The line between the fox and the hedgehog is not immovable. Nor is it left uncrossed through a batsman’s career. Some hedgehogs have been successful at the top level because of their ability to reduce everything to match their strength. “If the square cut is the only productive stroke you play, and you can square cut every time the ball is pitched short, then that’s all I ask of you,” a Chennai coach once told one of his wards. At the top level, Chetan Chauhan was an opener whose most profitable stroke was the square cut. He formed a fine partnership with Gavaskar thanks to this ability.
At the batting crease, choice can sometimes be terror. A batsman with few strokes is often more successful than one with many simply because the latter’s options call for better judgement. Gifted batsmen have dropped out of the national reckoning because of this. Saad bin Jung was a wonderful batsman with a range of strokes who made centuries in difficult conditions but did not play at the highest level.
Late career changes often convert foxes into hedgehogs. Rohan Kanhai, the brilliant West Indies stroke player and nightmare of bowlers around the world is a good example. So too is Gundappa Viswanath, who, as he aged, changed guard from leg to middle, and played fewer extravagant, aah!-making strokes.
Rishabh Pant has been an enigma in some ways — a wonderful striker of the ball with Test centuries in England and Australia who hasn’t been as successful in what might be considered his natural habitat, the white ball game. It was an issue with Sehwag too in his early days in the shorter formats. “Since I have played the international game,” Pant explained, “ I have realised that there is nothing called ‘natural game’. You have to play according to the situation and what the team needs. A good player is one who can mould his game according the situation.”
This could be a working definition of a good player: one who changes his game according to the situation. But a great player is one who changes the situation with his game. In his transition from the hedgehog to the fox, Pant should not forget that.
