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KYLE MAYERS IS PLAYING BRIAN LARA CRICKET PROPERLY

10-07-2022

Kyle Mayers really made an entrance. Since then he’s apparently been training with Codemasters. Short of inexplicably setting off for a run while the wicketkeeper stands at the stumps with the ball in his hands, it’s hard to envisage a more Brian Lara Cricket moment than the six he hit against Australia today.

People quite often say, “he’s playing Brian Lara Cricket,” about a passage of play, but they generally get it wrong. What they actually mean is, “he’s playing Stick Cricket.”

Stick Cricket was – indeed still is – the videogame home of relentless six-hitting. Brian Lara Cricket was a little more nuanced.

In this instance ‘nuanced’ pretty much means ‘polarised’ in that you tended to oscillate between playing improbable shots that somehow cleared the ropes and getting clean bowled.

Kyle Mayers’ shot off Cameron Green is perhaps the finest real-life example of the former. He played what really should have been completely the wrong shot but somehow middled it.

It’s all in that magnificent follow-through. It smacks of an on-screen character flawless performing one of its sequences of animation with absolutely no regard for where the ball is. The game engine also has little regard for where the ball is and so it translates Mayers’ completely-wrong-shot into a perfect six.

If you’re wondering how the match went after this, Mayers was clean bowled next ball after being somewhere around two seconds early on a looping ultra-slower-ball bouncer. He tried to play exactly the same back foot lofted drive and held the same pose as it went behind his ankles.

The Windies were ultimately bundled out for 72, only for Australia to collapse to 36 all out in three overs.

After a disastrous first over, David Warner had staged a recovery in the second, but was left stranded on 36 not out off six balls after further carnage in the third.

Sheldron Cottrell was the pick of the bowlers with 10-0. Speaking after the match, Australia captain Aaron Finch conceded his team potentially had a slight weakness against left-armers.

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