For devoted sports watchers like me, it is often fascinating to see an athlete possessed with some singular ability in one area of his/her game that is so striking that it sets that individual apart; it puts him/her above the crowd. Just this week, I am watching a tennis match with Stan Wawrinka, the Swiss player, one of the top-ranked players in the world with a good all-around game, and while he’s never achieved the number one status, he is considered by many experts – John McEnroe for instance – to have the best backhand in the game. In his match this week, the game would be going on back and forth, and Wawrinka, noticing his opponent drifting wide, would suddenly unleash the cross-court backhand. He hits the ball hard and deep and achieves so much top spin that the ball leaps off the court when it lands. It is a phenomenal shot, and Wawrinka, who has reached as high as No 3 in the world, owes much of his success to it. It puts him above the crowd.
In every time, we have these singularly blessed athletes entertaining us. In the NBA in present months we have one of them in Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors who, still young, is already being compared as a shooter to the legendary Michael Jordan. Curry is blessed with exceptional ability to control the ball in a dribble – backwards, forwards, sideways – but it is in his 3-point shooting that he goes beyond exceptional to phenomenal. Curry is one of those players who, as the experts put it, “always knows where the basket is”, even when he’s 30 feet away from it and being harassed by a defender. In many a close game, when all seems lost, and the clock running down, he will launch one of those long-range 3-pointers and create a win.
Soccer has a similar phenomenon in Lionel Messi of Barcelona. The Argentinian’s ball-control skills draw expressions of delight in game coverage week after week. Alongside his upfront partners – Neimar and Suarez – Messi consistently produces magic on the field with his pinpoint passing, and his dexterity with the ball is amazing in that he works equally well with the inside of his foot, or the outside, or the instep, or the toe, and he does this with either foot. In a recent match, he sped across the goal mouth and collected a pass on his right foot from Suarez. With the goalie coming out to meet him, there were two opposing players on Messi’s right, blocking him that way, and a marking player to his left as well.
Messy did not shoot. He simply took a step forward, shifted the ball to his left, and gently scooped it up with his left instep, over the goalie, and into the net. Confronted by four players, he had scored. The TV announcer referred to the move as “absolute genius”. Apart from his foot control, the striking thing about Messi is that he is always perfectly in balance in his attacks. There is a poster of him in the sports store at Giftland Mall. You look at it and you see the perfect stability he achieves in play; even the fingers of his hand are fanned out into balance in the shot.
This condition of a singular ability in an athlete we sometimes recognize even in the players at school level. I remember in my time at Saints that the late Leslie Wight was a prominent cricketer there (he may even have been the team captain) known for his patient batting and ability to “stay in”. Leslie was tall and slim – “maga-looking” as the term goes – but remarkably he had this surprising ability to the throw the cricket ball farther than one would believe possible, given his frame. Every time we had school sports contests, he would win the cricket ball throw with ease, and even in the yearly competitions with Queen’s College it was the same result. He was not ferocious with the bat, but ask him to throw the ball and look out. Given his build, that side of him was a phenomenon.
Unique athletic ability was also in play with the famous American tennis star Roscoe Tanner who played in the late ʼ70s and was known for his unique booming serve. He set the record at 153mph in 1978, and it stood for many years until it was broken by Andy Roddick in 2004 who reached 155mph. Tanner was a phenomenon achieving speeds once considered impossible in the sport. His serve was unusual for a very low toss, struck very quickly with an upward leap, and he reached as high as No 4 in the world at one time. While he did not dominate the game in the way that Jimmy Connors or Pete Sampras or John McEnroe did, he was a feared opponent because he would sometimes humiliate highly-ranked players with his unplayable serve. On that shot, he was often above the crowd.
These exceptional, gifted athletes (Muhammad Ali and Larry Bird are two others) come along in all the sports, and right now we are seeing the presence of another one in cricket in Chris Gayle. The Jamaican has drawn stinging criticism for his flamboyant lifestyle off the field, but out in the middle he is clearly the most efficient boundary machine operating in cricket today, this week giving West Indies a win over England in the T20 World Cup with a blazing century in just 47 balls. One cannot recall a player in the game, ancient or modern, who could find the boundary as frequently or with the power of Gayle. As a boundary hitter he is very adept at getting under the ball so that his shots frequently follow the pattern of a very high arc in the sky with the ball landing deep in the stands and sometimes out of the ground.
While he is rightfully praised for his power, Gayle is also clearly adept at reading a bowler so that he seems to recognize the short ball very quickly and capitalizes on it with his powerful swing. Mike Atherton points out that Gayle’s boundaries “come in an arc between wide long-on and mid-wicket, and the sweetness and power of the hitting come from certain fundamentals, too: a still head and strong base, allied to a physique more akin to a light-heavyweight than a jockey.”
Despite his off-field embarrassments, the Jamaican is one of that special breed of athletes with a singular ability. To watch them perform – whether it’s Messi heading for goal, or Curry defying gravity, or Gayle swinging for the boundary ‒ is to realize that we are witnessing individuals who have been blessed with exceptional physical gifts that put them above the crowd. All we can do is watch them and marvel.
